Holistic Portfolio-Based System to Evaluate OT Student Competency

Background: Health professions education is grounded in the responsibility of faculty to shape caring practitioners who can practice competently in complex health and school systems (Jensen & Greenfield, 2012). Educational... [ view full abstract ]

Background: Health professions education is grounded in the responsibility of faculty to shape caring practitioners who can practice competently in complex health and school systems (Jensen & Greenfield, 2012). Educational Philosophy or theory: Throughout education, a call has been made for competency-based education, ensuring that students have the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to enter the workforce. The challenge for educational programs to establish a reliable means to assess these competencies. Educational approaches used: We report the development of a holistic assessment scheme (Allen, 2004). This scheme includes student achievement in academic and fieldwork curricula and reflections on their development of professional reasoning skills. Our assessment tool was based on the initial steps of continuous improvement of student learning (Kent State). The development process included (1) reviewing program goals and values and aligning them with our curriculum, (2) developing learning objectives for this competencies portfolio based available OT competency standards, such as WFOT (2008) and the Lumina Foundation, (3) identifying how competencies were assessed in the curriculum, (4) working with instructional designers to identify gaps in assessment and help faculty develop sound instructional assessment principles and measures, (5) working with information technology to create a system for students to electronically curate a portfolio to demonstrate attainment of competencies across the academic program. Application to Education: The goal of this approach is to provide a systematic means to assess student achievement of curricular aims and to ensure that graduating students have the knowledge, skills and attitudes to practice occupational therapy.