Dr. Ark
Dr. Tavinder K. Ark, PhD is a medical education researcher and psychometrician whose work focuses on assessment, measurement, and the integration of technology in health professions education. She holds a doctorate in Measurement, Evaluation, and Research Methodology, with advanced training in Generalizability Theory, structural equation modeling, and large-scale data infrastructure development, and serves as a Professor in the Medical Education Department at the City College of New York School of Medicine, with adjunct appointments at the Data Science Institute and the Medical College of Wisconsin. Her scholarship is widely cited across medical education, psychometrics, and educational technology
Dr. Ark’s research spans workplace-based assessment, communication skills measurement, and the use of advanced analytic approaches to understand learner performance across clinical contexts. She has co-authored multi-year studies examining validity evidence for communication and clinical skills assessments in OSCEs, as well as well as growth trajectories of learner’s communication styles. Her work also examines how structured educational data—such as professional identity, communication, and clinical performance measures—relates to meaningful educational and clinical outcomes, contributing both methodological rigor and practical insight into formative and summative assessment practices.
More recently, Dr. Ark’s research advances AI-enabled approaches to clinical reasoning assessment and narrative feedback, integrating classical psychometrics with explainable AI and qualitative methods. A central focus of this work is the design and evaluation of learner- and educator-facing data visualizations and dashboards that support sense-making, reflection, coaching, and calibration. These tools translate multidimensional assessment data into actionable insights by making patterns of performance, growth trajectories, feedback quality, and equity visible at individual and programmatic levels. Across projects, Dr. Ark blends measurement theory, human-centered analytic design, and emerging technologies to improve the transparency, validity, and trustworthiness of assessment systems in health professions education.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ll2J3GMAAAAJ&hl=en