Midwifery registration in Australia requires students to achieve competence across academic, clinical, and professional areas. Industry plays a crucial role alongside university in nurturing future midwives. Post-graduate midwifery students are employed to work in a public or private hospital and are supervised by a clinical midwifery educator to achieve their clinical competencies while also completing university studies. Through work integrated learning experiences, achieving authentic clinical learning experiences are straightforward. The challenge to replicate authentic assessment within university education, however, is ongoing. Involvement of industry and students in the assessment processes is one approach that could be used to empower students to be responsible for their own learning and also foster greater engagement with industry. Additionally, peer to peer assessment allows students to evaluate and appraise the work of their peers. With repeated exposure at providing feedback, the students ability to critically appraise their own work is enhanced. An assessment task that includes a mock midwifery conference with peer-to-peer feedback will be provided to students enrolled in a clinical subject in session 202460. The authentic nature of the pedagogy behind the assessment task will link to real world clinical settings.
Aim
The aim of this study is to explore how an innovative assessment design can strengthen the alignment and authenticity of assessment tasks within a clinical subject of the graduate diploma of midwifery.
Methods
Post graduate Midwifery students and their clinical midwifery educators from the 202460 cohort Complexities in Midwifery Care subject, will be invited to participate in this study. The study will utilise a mixed methods approach to ensure that accurate and rich data is collected to inform the results. An explanatory sequential design will be employed, seeking to increase the study's overall validity by utilising qualitative approaches, informed by analysis of the quantitative part of the investigation.
Expected outcomes
It is anticipated that this study will illuminate the authentic nature of assessments within the post graduate midwifery clinical subject, to students and industry colleagues. In turn, the interface between students, industry and university learning and teaching will be strengthened. The outcome is expected to result in greater collaboration with resultant scholarly learning and teaching outcomes, particularly in relation to students’ critical thinking skills around complex midwifery care.
Conclusion
Both university and industry value their roles in supporting and nurturing midwives of the future. Authentic real-world assessments help midwifery students contextualise what happens in their clinical practice. Utilising our existing strong relationships with industry partners across Australia, this research project will contribute to strengthening industry engagement within learning and teaching scholarship and support real world replication of theory aligning with practice.
