Providing meaningful feedback for student learning: Creating a program of assessment for veterinary students in their clinical year

Assessment and feedback drive the learning process. However, in the teaching and learning cycle in a classroom we rarely close the loop between our teaching practices, our assessment practices and our feedback practices. Furthermore, assessment of student performance across a university program is typically fragmented; how a student does in one course is not linked to performance measures within another course. This leads to potential confusion for the student regarding their performance and does not provide program coordinators/administrators with consistent information of how students are performing across the program. Working with a community of faculty and students in veterinary medicine, this initiative will develop, implement and evaluate program of assessment for the workplace (clinical) learning environment and identify how to best provide performance relevant feedback to all stakeholders.

Teaching scholar(s)

Kent Hecker

Kent Hecker

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine

Kent Hecker is an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Cumming School of Medicine.  He has built a program of basic and applied educational research in three primary areas:  1) curriculum/program design and evaluation; 2) assessment of competencies in the health care professions; and 3) the application of neuro-imaging methods (functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI] and electroencephalography [EEG]) to assess learning, reasoning, and decision making in the health professions. He has more than 45 peer reviewed publications, 60 conference abstracts, and 20 invited presentations at national and international meetings.

Contact 
Kent Hecker
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
kghecker@ucalgary.ca

    Report abstract

    Assessment and feedback drive the learning process. However, in the teaching and learning cycle in a classroom we rarely close the loop between our teaching practices, our assessment practices and our feedback practices. Furthermore, assessment of student performance across a university program is typically fragmented; how a student does in one course is not linked to performance measures within another course. This leads to potential confusion for the student regarding their performance and does not provide program coordinators/administrators with consistent information of how students are performing across the program. Working with a community of faculty and students in veterinary medicine, this initiative will develop, implement and evaluate a program of assessment for the workplace (clinical) learning environment and identify how to best provide performance relevant feedback to all stakeholders.