In December 2015, Winny Setyonugroho defended his thesis 'The Assessment of Communication Skills During OSCEs: Development and Trialed Implementation of a New Standardised Model Using the MAAS-Global Instrument'. According to the external examiner Dr Marc van Nuland:
"This thesis is original in its introduction of a calibration process for OSCE checklist instruments. This certainly is a valuable contribution to the knowledge and scholarship within the domain of medical education. Further on, researching the effect of having a different first language on the results of communication assessment in OSCE is also of special interest. It is valuable that the candidate has tried to explain the observed differences of students with a different first language compared to native English speaking students from the perspective of the Theory of Working Memory."