Students of the Veterinary Nursing Program are passionate about animal health, and less concerned about communication. In fact, many students pursue veterinary medicine to avoid frequent interactions with others. Veterinary nurses play a critical role in client communication and education, communicating heavily with others. Much of the communication and hospital procedures course that I teach focuses on soft skills such as communication, empathy, and listening. So, how do I stress the importance of this content to students, keep them engaged, and help them make true connections to the course’s content? This can be accomplished through the creation and utilization of a well-structured assessment.
The assessment will focus on students and their personal connections to communication. Titled “My Communication Journal”, the assessment will be an ongoing journal that students will complete throughout the communication unit in the course. The journal will ask students to complete weekly tasks relating to the content and objectives provided.
This journal, a document that includes weekly instructions and assignments, is where students will write personal stories, review information, and complete small assignments. To begin, students will write how they feel about communication, their experience with communication specific courses, and their thoughts on what communication is. When introducing this first task to students I stress the importance of true reflection. I state that this question has no right or wrong response and no one particular way to complete it. Here, I want students to express their answers however they wish. By starting this assessment off with this expressive tone I hope to spark some creativity and excitement about the journaling tasks to come.
Next, using Flipgrid, a video recording and discussion platform, students will record a short story using only nonverbal communication, followed by sharing the same story using only verbal communication. After recording their videos, students will view and comment on other classmate’s videos and complete the task by reflecting on the experience in their journal. Integration of a new digital technology will offer students a unique learning experience, one that some students may prefer to learn by. Additionally, this portion of the assessment will give students an opportunity to interact during a fully online course. This exercise will feel strange to them but will help identify the importance of both nonverbal and verbal communication.
To review client-specific communication, a client and presenting complaint scenario will be given to students. They will be asked to think of a handful of open-ended questions that could be used to gain more information about the patient’s general history and the specific presenting complaint. First year students, many with minimal animal experience, complete this course. With a broad, vague, presenting complaint, students are encouraged to dive deeper into the many reasons why a patient might visit a clinic with such an issue to assist them in answering these questions.
To help students retrieve crucial conversation and communication information and apply it, they’ll be asked to recreate a diagram used to help teach this topic of communication with Microsoft Paint, Paintbrush, or other digital drawing apps. Using their masterpiece, students then describe a personal difficult conversation. Some students prefer to learn through opportunities for creativity or through alternative forms of representation. These preferred methods of learning are supported in unique assessment options like using digital technology to create or recreate.
Lastly, students will be asked to reflect back on what they learned during the unit as a whole. Feedback and final thoughts could include information such as what helped, what they enjoyed, and how they plan to apply the information moving forward. Through this exercise students will reflect back on their journal assignments, helping students see what they’ve learned and how it can be applied in their daily lives. Throughout the journal assessment I will provide feedback to students. According to John Hattie and Helen Timperley, there are four levels of feedback. Feedback about a task is the most common form of feedback used by educators but is not always beneficial to students. As they explain, it is easy to provide feedback directed to a specific part of a task, excluding feedback that connects to the overall learning goal and how students can lessen the gap between what is known and the learning goal (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). I hope to provide this meaningful feedback that encourages students to dive deeper and relate content to other aspects of the course and their profession.
The ongoing assessment can be found here. I offer a variety of tasks in hopes that most students will find this assessment valuable, engaging, and worthwhile.
References
"Dairy Notebook Pages Notes Write Journal Blank" is licensed under CC0 1.0
Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.proxy1.cl.msu.edu/docview/214113991/fulltextPDF/8635D7134F954A26PQ/1?accountid=12598.