Best Formative Assessment Project Award

Students believe assessment and feedback are the teacher’s sole responsibility; however, research shows that PA “contributes to the development of student learning and promotes ownership of assessment processes” (Bryant and Carless, 2010:3). To promote shared responsibility, the eFPA of oral presentations was included in the 2023-24 Blended Postgraduate Certificate in Practice Education (PgCPE) programme for the student practice educators (SPEs) to articulate aspects of their practice as educators in a professional multi-disciplinary environment. The 15-minute oral presentation of how they planned, implemented and reviewed an assessment for their own learners, considering the need to support learners' engagement with the process to promote inclusivity and social justice within the assessment and the wider learning environment happened in ClassCollaborate, the institution's web conferencing platform in the VLE for synchronous communication while asynchronous discussions were in the Discussion Board promoting self-regulatory skills; this also takes into account the SPEs' situational, institutional and dispositional barriers to learning. As the design and delivery of the eFPA, marking, reporting, storing the recorded presentations enabling evaluation from different perspectives (SPEs, Course team, internal/external moderators), this initiative is considered e-assessment (Joint Information Systems JISC, 2007). 36 SPEs, a mature group with diverse backgrounds and work experiences in the health care sector participated in the initiative from January to February 2024. For efficiency, nine virtual Presentation Rooms were created in ClassCollaborate with three/four students each enrolled as moderators to enable them to autonomously manage the assessment and feedback processes in a safe, secure space. For three weeks, the SPEs received guided, hands-on experience of using the tools in the virtual presentation rooms learning to upload slides and recording Mock presentations. In addition, training on how to use the rubric contributed to the SPEs understanding of how the course team would assess their oral presentations. Examples of constructive feedback and evaluative judgements were provided to mirror the course team's feedback practice. Review of recorded mock presentations as well as the course team's weekly observations of the SPEs' engagement with the eFPA and feedback processes was iterative throughout the period enabling timely changes and improvements to the process. The interim findings suggest that the eFPA empowered the SPEs to take over their own learning process and to become a resource for their peers; commenting on others' work appeared to improve their understanding of assessment criteria with a focus on success, helping them to become more engaged in learning and developing their interpersonal skills and their attitude to assessment and feedback as a shared responsibility. For the course team, eFPA can potentially reduce their assessment and feedback workload.