Checklist for assessing students
Plan assessment
- Ensure you are familiar with the university requirements for assessment, including university assessment forms.
- Remain clear on the standard that is required to demonstrate competency. Ensure you are familiar with any profession-specific assessment tools.
- Timetable the mid and end of placement assessment at the beginning of the placement.
- Engage in professional development to ensure you are confident and consistent in assessing to the required standard.
- Continue to develop your assessment skills, using reflective practice.
- If there are multiple student supervisors, assign one as the lead assessor to coordinate the process.
Prepare the student
- Explain the purpose of the assessment to the student and when it will take place (e.g. mid-way and end of placement).
- Explain expectations of student participation in the assessment process.
- Check that the student understands the assessment form.
- Discuss how performance will be assessed and how this relates to competency.
- Distinguish between assessment and ‘providing feedback’.
Collect evidence of the student’s performance to support your assessment decisions
From the start of the placement, start gathering evidence on the student’s performance to support your assessment. Use multiple sources of evidence from different situations, clients and staff member interactions. Where appropriate, utilise examples and a variety of forms of evidence including:
- feedback to student (e.g. copy of observations)
- case notes
- reports
- feedback from other professionals
- structured activities or set tasks.
Discuss with the student - give feedback and devise strategies
- Deliver the assessment results to the student, highlighting areas in which they are performing well/meeting the standard and areas which require improvement, either during the remainder of the placement (or in future placements).
- Use self-reflection to guide feedback, and encourage and allow students time to self-reflect.
- Work with the student to identify gaps and devise strategies to meet these learning goals.
- Determine what (if any) additional support is required (e.g. additional time, different caseload, more/less supervision, more/less feedback, counselling).
- Develop an individual learning plan or contract, and refer the student to their plan to regularly revise it.
Provide opportunities and make evidence based decisions
- Provide the student with opportunities to meet their learning goals.
- Ensure evidence is collected for each criterion (where possible, if you do not have sufficient evidence to grade the student then do not grade them).
- Make a decision based on the evidence.
- Use the evidence to explain the grade to the student.
Reflect and evaluate
- Reflect on the assessment process and the feedback session (e.g. did you allow sufficient time, was the student’s self-assessment similar to your gradings?).
- What worked well?
- What could you change for next time?
- Is the student progressing well with milestones? Do you need to engage the university placement coordinator?
References:
Please Note: References remain valid until superseded by later research. The resources referenced here are regularly reviewed and are considered current and relevant to the topics presented.
- Hauer, K. E., Ciccone, A., Henzel, T. R., Katsufrakis, P., Miller, S. H., Norcross, W. A., Papadakis, M. A., & Irby, D. M. (2009). Remediation of the deficiencies of physicians across the continuum from medical school to practice: a thematic review of the literature. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 84(12), 1822–1832. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0b013e3181bf3170
- Griffith University Clinical Education Resource Manual, (2012). School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, Griffith University.
