Students at Griffith University develop teamwork and leadership qualities
Context
This is the final theoretical course in a Midwifery bachelor’s program, preparing students for graduation as a competent, capable, and caring midwifery practitioner.
The course is designed to support students’ teamwork skills within the framework of clinical practice and risk management. Furthermore, students practice and develop their midwifery leadership qualities, ready to be applied in their future careers.
The instructor decided to use Group Member Evaluation to help students build confidence and experience in the social aspects of the practice, while making it easier for both instructor and the students to see an overview of their feedback.
Learning objectives
- Students develop effective communication and collaboration skills applicable in diverse, international environments.
- Students will gain a deeper understanding of the importance of effective leadership in midwifery.
Learning activities
Students work in teams of 4 - 6, appointing a group leader, to explore, examine and report on a critical incident in maternity care using risk management and clinical governance principles. Each team is required to prepare a presentation and present their findings to their peers. They then submit a self and peer assessment of each team member’s teamwork skills using Group Member Evaluation. Within this peer assessment, students use a 5-point scale to assess various criteria such as punctuality and communication.
These learning activities address the following level of Bloom’s Taxonomy:
- Evaluate the skills of peers according to given criteria.
Assessment of learning outcomes
- Group Member Evaluation was used for self and peer feedback for no marks. The students used this feedback plus immediate reflection to form the basis of a reflective piece that was the second part of the assessment item and the reflective piece was marked.
Notable outcomes
- In a diverse student population, anonymous feedback through Group Member Evaluation worked well to help students give fair and unbiased feedback.
- Students found the user interface straightforward and intuitive, lessening the extra cognitive load and allowing them to focus on the activity and the feedback. They generally completed the activity quickly, and left ample comments.
- The instructor was able to see who had and hadn’t completed their work, allowing for a clear overview of students’ progress with the activity.
"I was so excited when I was introduced to FeedbackFruits as I could see it was such an elegant process for students to use." - Dr. Carolyn Hastie, Midwifery Lecturer
The role of the instructor
- The instructor includes detailed instructions of learning activity in the course manual and makes explicit reference to the use of FeedbackFruits as part of the course.
- After students proceed with the feedback process, the instructor checks the student overview within the tool to evaluate the group dynamics and assess student learning.
- Metrics such as the average scores students received and the time spent giving feedback are used as general performance indicators.
Added value of technology
- Apart from saving time and streamlining the feedback process from the instructor’s perspective, students also reported that they found the interface simple and easy to use.
Possible variation
By enabling Configurable Grading, the instructor can add a summative assessment element to the activity, for example allowing factors such as timely completion of the activity, and peers’ scores to contribute to each other’s final marks.
