Reimagining assessment in scaled up work-based learning: a case study in Applied Health Sciences
Heather May Morgan PhD, FHEA1, Toni Gibson BSc, SFHEA1, Emily Cleland MSc1, Caroline Franco PhD1,2
1Postgraduate Education Group, Institute of Applied Health Sciences, University of Aberdeen
Corresponding author email: h.morgan@abdn.ac.uk
Since 2017-18, our team has run work-based placements for Masters students in Applied Health Sciences at the University of Aberdeen. Following handover of one course (15 credits; spring term) from colleagues in 2017, we were placing under 10 students per year on a very competitive basis. However, we wanted to be more inclusive, so we opened the original course to the whole cohort and developed a second course (30 credits; summer term) to offer the opportunity to more students in subsequent years. Initially, in 2018-19, we increased placement numbers to 15-25 students per year on placement 1 day/week (15 credits), but, by 2021-22, we were also able to offer 100+ student placements for 2.5 days/week (30 credits). We are now developing a third full-time placement course (60 credits; summer term, from 2024-25), which will allow MSc Health Data Science students to dedicate their study exclusively to a work-based learning experience and develop highly specialised skills in the field, with plans to expand this framework to other degree programmes while keeping learning outcomes and assessments aligned to the distinct applied health science field of choice.
This expansion has been driven by our own students’ clear understandings of the value of work-based learning for enhancing employability, particularly students who are transitioning from clinical to scientific roles, international students with no UK work experience and home students with, for example, retail/hospitality but no professional work experience. This, and our University’s 2040 strategic commitment to ensure all of our students have the opportunity to undertake a form of work-based learning as part of their degree, underpins our continued motivation to lead on developing and sharing best practice.
One aspect of this work has been refreshing the intended learning outcomes, which in turn has highlighted a need to review our assessments regularly. This is not only due to scaling up with increased numbers, but also because traditional University-based assessments are not necessarily fit for purpose in work-based learning. A full review – involving students and employers – was undertaken in 2019-20 and changes were made to include professional development goal setting and review components. Several pedagogical research projects, including systematically exploring assessment types used at other universities and an evaluation of graduate attributes development, have been led by our group since. They have informed our reworked assessment and we have presented at international conferences for others to learn from.
Another major influence to our ongoing reflections was a contribution by colleagues at the Improving University Teaching conference in 2022, where we were introduced to Amita, Marissa and Ruth from the School of Allied Health, Exercise and Sport Sciences at Charles Sturt University in Australia. They gave a very interesting and thought-provoking talk on their introduction of ‘Interactive Oral Assessment’, which they complete with 300+ students annually. This resonated with us after a resit exam (where we had a student who performed spectacularly well in a viva voce, but not in their final written piece) and so the idea of introducing an oral assessment as part of our work-based learning provision was born – reassured that it could be done at such a scale! We have been discussing and working towards a pedagogical research collaboration going forward.
Following delivery of our two work-based learning courses in 2022-23, with new members joining the team plus this added insight from Australian colleagues, we decided to have an away day to discuss our experiences, views, the evidence (or lack thereof) and new ideas, and to agree a joined up, aligned approach to our suite of course learning outcomes and assessments across the offering, including our new course for health data scientists.
Please see the results in Figure 1 – Intended Learning Outcomes and Figure 2 – Proposed Assessments, now including oral assessments for 2023-23 courses.
Our new course synopses are tailored to show clear individual course identities beyond just credits/time spent working, whilst also demonstrating how our thinking is consistent across the piece. Key features of improvement are:
- Continual assessment throughout the courses, offering opportunities for earlier feedback (previously weighting assessment towards the end of a course when the placement finishes);
- Feedback from employers included in formal assessment (previously informal); and
- Inclusion of oral assessment within a workbook/log/portfolio approach as part of a suite of assessment formats.
This has led us to refine our contact time workshops and structured teaching wrap-around as appropriate for each course. We look forward to implementing these changes and reporting back! In the meantime, you can read what our students have to say here.
