Confident and competent?: helping students to develop their practice based skills

The Competence in Practice Assessment (CiPA) Tool was designed and developed to support student self-assessment in a social care or health setting. It is one of many artefacts created as part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning called ‘Assessment and Learning in Practice Settings’. Demonstration of competence is essential for courses leading to professional registration. This presentation will chart the development and evaluation of the CiPA tool into responsive software that students can self complete at stages throughout their course: In doing this we demonstrate how a research project became the springboard for the development of student centred learning and teaching innovation. 14 students from a range of health and social work courses, who responded to a job advertisement, worked in multiprofessional collaborative groups to design feedback, reflective prompts and resource links in response to students’ self assessment ratings. This was then built into a simple software package by a computing placement student.
The result is that students complete the tool [with potential for PC, web or Mobile access] by assessing their perception of their own competency at their current stage in the course. The software provides them with feedback designed to support their own assessment and suggest actions: this is confidential and thus a safe activity, but linked to Personal Development Planning and so able to be incorporated into their record of professional growth, preparation for further placement experience and readiness for qualification. Taking responsibility for one’s own learning, and developing self assessment skills are parts of becoming a competent practitioner in any profession; thus whilst the questions as they stand relate to health and social care professions, the design principles apply to any placement experience, leading to opportunities for creative development of the tool.