Curriculum overload is a recognized challenge in pharmacy education, resulting in faculty and student inefficiencies, stress, and burnout. While recent efforts have focused on addressing curriculum expansion and content overload, a related challenge has emerged: assessment overload. Assessment overload presents as a distinct yet interconnected phenomenon to curriculum overload, sharing similar causes and consequences for faculty and students. This commentary explores faculty and student perspectives and proposes two strategies for addressing assessment overload. These strategies include integrating mindful assessment evaluation into pre-existing course continuous quality improvement efforts and conducting an intentional review of assessments. With a focus on alignment, intention, and balance, these approaches offer mechanisms to reduce unnecessary assessment burdens while preserving meaningful evaluations of learning. Collaborative efforts within courses, across institutions, and at academy can support the development of intentional, sustainable assessment practices that better serve faculty and students.
Williams et al. (Sun,) studied this question.