C1 — Title required
Import ruleErrorThe station has no title.
The import format requires the title in row 2 — StudyDrome rejects a file without one.
Example that trips it: (no title)
· Fix: Name the station in step 2.
Build an OSCE station checklist step by step — or paste one you already have — and get instant, literature-based quality checks. Export a file that imports straight into StudyDrome.
Everything runs in your browser — your checklist is never uploaded, stored, or seen by us.
The exported workbook is StudyDrome's own OSCE station import format, byte-compatible with the product's layout constants — that claim is regression-tested against the product's import parser rules on every build:
Want a starting point instead of a blank builder? The OSCE station template is this builder's static sibling — a clean, well-formed station in the same import format, ready to edit in Excel.
Get the station template →Two tiers: import rules (errors — the file would be rejected) and quality screening from the OSCE literature (warnings and notes — each cites its source). Every example below is executable documentation: the test suite asserts each one actually triggers its rule.
The station has no title.
The import format requires the title in row 2 — StudyDrome rejects a file without one.
Example that trips it: (no title)
· Fix: Name the station in step 2.
The checklist has no items at all.
The importer requires at least one checklist item.
Example that trips it: (empty checklist)
· Fix: Add items in step 3.
An item or section has no text.
The importer rejects blank items; an unnamed section is unreadable in print.
Example that trips it: (blank row)
· Fix: Write the item or remove the row.
The shared scale has no levels (station mode), or an item has no score values (per-item mode).
Without a scale there is nothing to score — the importer rejects the file.
Example that trips it: (no scale levels)
· Fix: Add scale levels in step 2.
More than one item is marked as the overall grade.
The import format allows at most one global-rating item per station — the importer rejects the file with "At most one item can be marked as Overall Grade".
Example that trips it: 2 items flagged
· Fix: Keep the global-rating flag on a single item.
A critical-fail threshold is set on an item that is not marked critical.
The importer rejects this: "Threshold is only applicable when Critical is TRUE".
Example that trips it: threshold 1, not critical
· Fix: Mark the item critical, or clear the threshold.
A critical-fail threshold is below zero.
The importer rejects negative thresholds: "Threshold must be >= 0".
Example that trips it: threshold -1
· Fix: Set the threshold to 0 (fail only when nothing was done) or higher.
Text exceeds the import format's limits: 500 characters for the title (silently truncated) and item text, 250 for scale labels.
Over-limit labels are rejected outright; over-limit titles are cut without warning — better to shorten them yourself.
Example that trips it: 260-character label
· Fix: Shorten the text; move detail into the station description.
Fewer than 5 items (note) or more than 30 (warning).
Very short checklists under-sample the task; very long ones push examiners into tick-box scoring. Typical stations run ~10–25 items.
Example that trips it: 31 items
· Fix: Merge micro-steps; keep items at the level an examiner can observe and judge.
No item is marked as the overall grade, or the global-rating scale has unlabeled grades.
Borderline standard-setting methods — borderline group and borderline regression — need exactly one anchored global rating per station.
Example that trips it: no overall-grade item
· Fix: Add a final "Overall global rating" item, mark it as the overall grade, and anchor every grade.
A critical item's fail threshold reaches its top score (nobody can pass), or most of the checklist is flagged critical.
Critical items are auto-fail switches — miscalibrated ones silently fail everyone, and overusing them stops the checklist discriminating.
Example that trips it: threshold 2 on a 0–2 scale
· Fix: Lower the threshold below the top score; reserve critical flags for genuine safety violations.
An item describes knowledge or attitude — understands, knows, appreciates, is aware, recognizes, familiar with — rather than visible behavior.
An examiner can only score what they can see or hear. Non-observable items force guessing and wreck inter-rater agreement.
Example that trips it: Understands
· Fix: Reword to an action verb: asks, performs, demonstrates, explains, checks…
A scale has a single level, ties or mixed direction in its values, or unlabeled levels.
Ambiguous scales are scored inconsistently between examiners; anchored, strictly ordered levels keep judgments comparable.
Example that trips it: two levels share value 1
· Fix: Order level values strictly and label every level.
A section header has no items under it.
The import format encodes sections through their items, so an empty section silently disappears from the export.
Example that trips it: Procedure
· Fix: Add items under it or remove the section.
In per-item mode, a single item is worth 40% or more of the station total. (An informational note also explains that the overall-grade item contributes 0 points.)
One dominant item makes the station a one-question exam — reliability and content coverage both suffer.
Example that trips it: 10 of 12 points on one item
· Fix: Rebalance the per-item scales so no single item dwarfs the rest.
These are structural checks: format rules the StudyDrome importer enforces, plus screening heuristics from the OSCE-development literature. They cannot judge whether the checklist measures the right clinical construct — content validity needs review by subject experts and standard-setting by your assessment committee (Daniels & Pugh 2018).
No. Building, validation, and file generation all run in your browser. The only network requests are an anonymous usage counter (page slug and event name — never content) and, if you unlock exports, your email address.
Yes — that's the point of the tool. The file follows StudyDrome's import layout exactly, and our test suite mirrors the product's import parser rules (sheet name, cell positions, scale format, section encoding, boolean and threshold handling) so the two can't drift apart.
The overall grade is the examiner's single global rating of the performance, used by borderline standard-setting methods (borderline group and borderline regression) to derive the pass mark. Two global ratings would be ambiguous, so the import format allows at most one — and the literature recommends exactly one anchored global rating per station.
A critical item is an auto-fail switch for patient-safety essentials: if the candidate scores at or below the fail threshold on it, they fail the station regardless of their total. Use them sparingly — the validator warns when most of a checklist is flagged critical.
Yes. The builder and validation report are free without an email; the XLSX and PDF exports ask for a work email. We make StudyDrome, an exam platform that runs OSCEs end to end — this tool is how we introduce ourselves.