Bryant, Jodie; Shannon, Harriet; (2022) Working in partnership with students for assessment topics in postgraduate education: lessons from physiotherapy education. BCU Education Journal , 2 (3) pp. 53-58.

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Abstract

Student-led assessment encompasses a variety of practices through which students are actively involved in their own learning and assessment processes. It was first documented in 1938 by John Dewey, who coined the phrase ‘progressive education’ as a move away from didactic, teacher-led education towards a more social/context-oriented model. At its core, student-led assessment aims to empower students to take responsibility for their own learning, and the learning of their peers. This might include peer feedback (Lui & Carless, 2006), group portfolios (Lopez-Pastor et al, 2010), or co-creating a database of multiple-choice questions (Harris et al, 2015). Much of the research into student-led assessment is focused on formative assessment that does not carry a mark or module weighting, often as part of a broader student-led pedagogical shift (Rowley et al, 2017). Indeed the 2015 Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (Standard 1.3), states that universities “should ensure that programme are delivered in a way that encourages students to take an active role in creating the learning process, and that the assessment of students reflects this approach” (ESG, 2015). The UCL ‘Acute Cardiorespiratory Physiotherapy Skills’ module is delivered across a 6 day programme, .Learners on the programme are post-registration postgraduate physiotherapy students. Most work in a specific subspeciality within the cardiorespiratory field, either locally or overseas. The module is assessed by a written, case-study based exam. The module lead (an academic with expertise in cardiorespiratory physiotherapy) sets the exam paper, with input from external lecturers who have contributed to the module. It is sent to the external examiner for final amendments and sign-off In 2020-21, 11% of students reported that they felt the exam topics that had been selected were somewhat removed from their own clinical reality, involving scenarios they were unlikely to see in their own practice. The challenge is that each cohort is diverse (in terms of area of specialism and country of training) and it is impossible to predict the clinical expertise that each student will bring to the module. To address this, we designed a student-led collaborative exam preparation session, which sought to better understand students’ own clinical environments (e.g. community, hospital or school setting), specialty areas (e.g. intensive care, surgery, long-term ventilation, palliative care) and patient population (e.g. asthma, chronic obstructive lung disease, burns, neuromuscular conditions). This was used to guide and inform the content of the written assessment.

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