Fieldwork Educator Training: Design and Evaluation of an Educational Package

Abstract

This article describes and evaluates an educational package consisting of five hypothetical case studies. The case studies were designed by the School of Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy, University of Southampton, and used during briefing sessions with fieldwork educators in order to introduce the fieldwork assessment form and discuss grading issues. A questionnaire survey of 70 fieldwork educators who had attended a briefing session and used the five hypothetical case studies revealed that, generally, the fieldwork educators found the briefing session, including the grading exercise with the case studies, useful. The fieldwork educators indicated a commitment to the principles of being reliable assessors but felt that certain areas needed more consideration, such as the implications of giving grades to real as opposed to hypothetical students. The implications of these results are discussed in relation to literature regarding assessment issues and fieldwork educator training.