Background: Irish Social Care education is undergoing one of the most significant developments since its inception. CORU, Irelands multi-profession health regulator, is tasked with an emerging remit to set and oversee quality... [ view full abstract ]
Background: Irish Social Care education is undergoing one of the most significant developments since its inception. CORU, Irelands multi-profession health regulator, is tasked with an emerging remit to set and oversee quality standards of Social Care education in Irish Higher Education Institutes (CORU, 2017). Embedding this process warrants a re-examination of methods of assessment that are traditionally used to evaluate students on Supervised Professional Practice.
Rationale: Technological platforms that facilitate computer-supported collaborative learning have become ubiquitous in education and training across all disciplines in Higher Education Institutes. In research, the topic of online discussion boards supplementing learning has been investigated over the last 15 years with foci varying from participant interactions (Light et al., 2000; Moore and Marra, 2014; Biasutti, 2016) moderator involvement (Thormann and Fidalgo, 2014; Baxter and Haycock, 2014) to effective assessment (Oliver, 1999; Northover, 2002). However, there is limited research into the use of technology in social care education. In 2016-2017, a programme was piloted in the Institute of Technology, Carlow that replaced the traditional portfolio assessment with asynchronous online discussion (AOD) boards for the Supervised Professional Practice module in the Social Care undergraduate programme.
Methodology: The purpose of the study was to capture student attitudes about the assessment and to evaluate the efficacy and usefulness of using AOD boards as assessment in social care supervised professional practice. Furthermore, the study sought to establish whether AOD boards were appropriate as a learning tool to foster meaningful learning in social care education for specific competencies standardised by CORU. A sequential mixed methods complementarity approach was utilised by distributing a systematic survey to 49 purposively selected respondents who were assessed on social care supervised professional practice through asynchronous online discussion boards. To enhance the results of the survey, a focus group involving a cross section of the purposive sample (n=8) was held to explore emergent themes in further detail. Face to face interviews (n=5) were held with the lecturers who taught preparation for professional practice and graded the discussion board transcripts. Finally a content analysis coding scheme was used to objectively analyse interaction frequency in two discussion board transcripts to triangulate one of the most predominant themes.
Findings: The practical and theoretical efficacy of AOD to facilitate collaborative reflection and to enhance the acquisition of ancillary graduate attributes in student learners was evident from the data. AOD offers a flexible and adaptable platform to assess student learning and meets a variety of student learning preferences, such as autonomy, peer-learning, and formative feedback. Effective moderation is considered a fundamental instructional component of AOD. Findings suggest that to foster meaningful interactions on the AOD, the moderator must play more than a passive role in the discussion. However, polarising attitudes on the use of AOD as assessment in social care education are indicated.
Core components have been identified for educators to observe in the design and implementation of an AOD board assessment. The findings in this study have informed a draft framework for most effective practice to use AOD boards as assessment in social care supervised professional practice.
