Mary Brown
The University of Nottingham, UK
Title: Collaboration and constructivist learning around cultural competence – student-centred learning and assessment
Biography
Biography: Mary Brown
Abstract
One of educational conflicts that can arise during experiential learning is the issue of how to assess students in order to ensure that they meet module and academic requirements, whilst at the same time not narrowing the potential learning experience of the student, (Barrett, 2004). We recently introduced an e-portfolio to coordinate all aspects of an international elective placement process for second year nursing students. During their placements students were asked to reflect on their experiences and collate evidence of achievement. After their placement, they developed a portfolio of media to document and reflect upon their learning, aimed at supporting cultural competence development and group learning. Whilst it was straightforward to determine the extent to which the e-portfolio fulfilled institutional assessment and management requirements, we also developed an evaluation tool based on Barret’s (2004) principles of e-portfolio functionality to determine the extent to which the process and subsequent portfolios were able to capture the students’ ownership of their learning around cultural competence and the skills that they can take forward into future practice. Here, we will present our results showing how the process functioned as a robust and reliable assessment of cultural competence and the extent to which students were able to develop a constructivist learning resource that matched the characteristics of a student owned portfolio at the same time.