Education Commons^™

Handwriting Performance Of Typical Second-Grade Students As Measured By The Evaluation Tool Of Children's Handwriting - Manuscript And Teacher Perceptions Of Legibility, Diane M. Long, James Conklin

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

Background: The purpose of the study was to describe scores achieved by typical second-grade students on the Evaluation Tool of Children’s Handwriting – Manuscript and to compare scores with teacher perceptions.

Method: As part of a larger study, the ETCH-M was administered to 74 second-grade students. Teachers scored classroom samples of handwriting assignments using a researcher-developed scale and scores were compared to ETCH-M scores to determine cutoff values for good versus poor handwriting.

Results: Mean scores for total word legibility, total letter legibility, and total numeral legibility were 88.82%, 84.30%, and 89.26%, respectively. Cutoff scores below 82% …

The Assessment Of Swimming And Survival Skills: Is Your Programme Fit For Its Purpose?, Paolo Di Paola

International Journal of Aquatic Research and Education

Assessment of swimming and survival skills is a crucial part of any swimming and lifesaving programme. Unfortunately, quite often, it is also the weakest part of the programme itself. Inadequate skills assessment and verification might lead to ineffective skills acquisition and development, to a false sense of safety and over confidence in the water that can be extremely dangerous. Assessor experience and observation skills, assessment methodology, and criteria are all closely inter-linked and their interaction will somehow determine the assessment outcomes. Our paper analyses some of the current issues in these areas of the assessment process, such as assessor’s lack …

The Role Of Using Formative Assessments In Problem-Based Learning: A Health Sciences Education Perspective, Kristi W. Kelley, Julaine M. Fowlin, Andrew A. Tawfik, Max C. Anderson

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

Practitioners in the field of pharmacy are often confronted with ill-structured problems. Specifically, pharmacists are tasked with making patient-specific recommendations that are both safe and effective, which requires combining knowledge from the biomedical, behavioral, and pharmaceutical sciences. Given the dynamic nature of pharmacy as a profession, the field has begun to explore learning strategies that go beyond mere content coverage to strategies that better support higher-order learning outcomes. One of these approaches is problem-based learning (PBL). While studies have focused on how to support PBL to improve learning outcomes, the role of assessment is often overlooked. Further exploration is thus …

Toward The Development Of A Quick, Reliable Assessment Tool For Reflective Journals, April Garrity, Casey Keck, Janet L. Bradshaw, Keiko Ishikawa

Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences & Disorders

Reflective practice, including reflective writing, can facilitate enriched learning, especially when implemented as part of a service-learning (SL) experience. Reflection is a central component of service-learning (SL) experiences. Students’ reflective abilities are often measured through reflective journaling; however, assessment of students’ reflective journals is not always efficient and straightforward. The goal of the present study was to establish a simple, reliable, and relatively quick tool for use by busy college instructors seeking to encourage students’ deep learning through reflective writing. A total of 258 reflective journals from 43 graduate students in speech-language pathology were evaluated by three raters using a …

Design Of An Osce To Assess Clinical Competence Of Occupational Therapy Students, Nancy E. Krusen, Debra Rollins

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

Objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) are a series of controlled, timed stations in which students demonstrate clinical skills. OSCEs are commonly used within health professions education to demonstrate competence, prepare for clinical education, and conduct program evaluation. The body of literature addressing the use of OSCEs in occupational therapy (OT) is growing; however, there are no available guidelines for developing an OSCE specific to the profession. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design of an OSCE for OT students prior to fieldwork placement. Twelve OT practitioners participated in a modified-Delphi method to generate possible OSCE scenarios. The …

Perceptions Of Assessment In Norwegian Occupational Therapy Students, Tore Bonsaksen, Astrid Gramstad, Gry Mørk, Susanne G. Johnson

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

In addition to securing minimum standards of learning among students, assessment is increasingly used as a tool to improve students’ learning. Assessment quality is measured as part of the Course Experience Questionnaire; however, the original ‘appropriate assessment’ scale has demonstrated ambiguous psychometric properties. The current study aimed to gain knowledge about occupational therapy students’ perceptions of assessment, and this was achieved by examining the factor structure and internal consistency of the six items on the ‘appropriate assessment’ scale. Students from six Norwegian universities (n = 187, response rate 61.3 %) completed the scale and reported demographic information. The factor …