Innovative Assessment:

"how students engage and participate, offering a variety in the range of assessment approaches used."

Feedback practices:

"Feedback is integral to assessment and a dialogic learning and teaching process"

Self and peer-assessment:

Through being involved in assessing and giving feedback to others, learners can build confidence, assessment literacy and fully appreciate what is required of them"

Good feedback provides prompt feedback - this is relevant in context of practice education where feedback is likely to be verbal and provided at the same time as the situated learning.

Assignment sequence design - Feedforwards. Relevant to motivate improvements in performance in clinical practice.

Authentic Assessment - a focus on 'real world' problems, challenges or tasks is essential for practice development.

Emotional Climate: the emotional impact and power dynamics involved in feedback. Feedback is usually provided by a clinical assessor/supervisor/manager in clinical learning environments.

Assessment Literacy: continuing professional development involves self directed and distance learning, particularly with an increase in the use of online learning in health settings. As a practice educator, I need to consider how to support learners to develop self awareness, habits of reflection and self criticism as well as utilising their peers as a learning resource.

Learner orientation: Understanding the learners motivation for learning and how seriously they are engaged in this as a learning opportunity. There are learning opportunities within health care and health care standards to be met that can become 'tick box'.

Hope for success or fear of failure: In a world of patient safety then perhaps giving and recieving feedback on a learners performance in clinical practice has more of an emotional impact. The stakes for getting it wrong can be high.

 Gibbs (2015) reflects in his blog, effective feedback is feedback that is good quality and given in a timely manner thus allowing the learner to make best use of it. Sambell (2012) describes how good feedback processes include providing feedback in a way that feeds forward.  Nestel, Kneebone & Kidd (2004) carried out a case study involving medical students and effective feedback as part of scenario based assessment. The results indicate the majority of students agreed they felt peer feedback was constructive. The researchers did not discover any issues regarding safety of practice but when comparing peer feedback with feedback delivered by experts, the peer feedback was considered of less quality.  It was the recommendations within this case study that I based my assessment criteria for our formative assessment: I focused on creating learning activities that enhance the quality of effective feedback during self-assessment and peer review, in consideration of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999).  In my place of work, I am planning to use this learning to improve on equipping our learners and facilitators with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to provide effective feedback, so that feedback is recognised as meaningful and not a wasted effort.

References

Advance HE. (2015).  Transforming Assessment in Higher Education Framework. Available at: Transforming Assessment in Higher Education Framework. ...   (Accessed: 12/11/2023).

Biggs, J. (1999).  What the Student Does: Teaching for Enhanced Learning. Higher Education Research and Development. Vol. 31. Issue 1. pp39-55. Available at:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2012.642839.Links to an external site. (Accessed: 19/05/2023). 

Gibbs, G.  (2015).  Making Feedback Work Involves More than Giving Feedback – Part 1 The Assessment Context.  Staff and Educational Development Association.  No. 27. Available at: 'Making feedback work involves more than giving feedback'  (Accessed 12/11/2023).

Nestel, D. Kneebone, R. Kidd, J.  (2004). Triadic Peer Review in Scenario-based Assessments.  Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Issue 1. p108-p111.

Sambell, K. (2012).  Chapter 2: Assessment for Learning in Higher Education. Balancing Summative and Formative Assessment. Taylor and Francis Group.

Feedback is a critical skill in improving performance in clinical teaching sessions. It ensures best practice, corrects poor performance and identifies improvement.

When feedback is used to reinforce and modify behaviour, it can cause harm if not carefully managed.

Regular feedback has been proven in the research literature to significantly improve clinical performance

Barriers to giving feedback:

The person giving feedback has had little or no instruction.

feedback is relational - giving negative feedback to a colleague can be challenging for different reasons.

Feedback techniques:

Informal Feedback

Feedback Sandwich

The Pendleton model

Reflective feedback conversation

Reflection:

Giving feedback is a critical skill that needs repeated practice and self awareness via reflection on your own performance.

Argues that feedback practices are suboptimal because they only focus on the teacher. Learners need to be empowered to with the skills to receive and use feedback whilst compensating for 'less than ideal' feedback delivery when working in a busy clinical environment.

Learners who can ask, receive and handle feedback ease the process for teachers.

Behavioural

Motivational

Reinforcement

Cognitive:

Directive

Corrective approach

Challenging

Expert to passive recipient

Socioconstructivist:

Facilitative

dialogue

all teach, all learn

Shared experiences

Communities of Practice

Student led

References

Evans, C. (2013). Making Sense of Assessment Feedback in Higher Education. Review of Educational Research. Vol. 83. No. 1. pp70-120.

What I am doing well

What could be even better

What I can do to improve

Where I will gain opportunities to develop my learning further

What I need to do next

What do I need to learn to improve?

Regular and timely feedback

Feedback that feeds forward

Feedback that is constructive

Feedback that is compassionate

Feedback literacies

What is my personal action plan?

To seek opportunities to improve skills in giving feedback

To engage in reflection when I receive feedback

To identify opportunities for regular feedback as part of my own learning and development as a practice educator:

What skills do I already have and what skills do I need to still develop as a learner in giving and receiving feedback?

"Assessment feedback is seen as an integral part of learning (Cramp, 2011) and as a “supported sequential process rather than a series of unrelated events” (Archer, 2010, p. 101)". Evans, C. (2013). Making Sense of Assessment Feedback in Higher Education. Review of Educational Research. Vol. 83. No. 1. pp70-120.