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 formative 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. I’ve added the requirement of using a Google Doc to complete weekly tasks. With editing rights, this will allow me to view student weekly submissions and provide valuable feedback. With this feedback, I hope to deepen the thoughts and knowledge of the material and encourage active return of communication.
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 before jumping into the unit.
The following tasks are intended to be completed alongside the material that is being presented through brief recorded lectures and weekly virtual lecture sessions. Traditionally, this unit includes entertaining activities to foster student learning. For example, students play a form of silent charades when learning about the importance of nonverbal communication and participate in role playing and small group collaboration when learning about client communication. Facing a new challenge due to the recent pandemic and implementing virtual teaching and learning, these activities are being modified. I hope to utilize polling feedback capabilities and break-out rooms. These digital tools will allow students to actively participate, see real time results, and work privately with others. Assessment tasks to coincide with the specific topics include the use of Flipgrid, a video recording and discussion platform. With Flipgrid, students will record a short story using only nonverbal communication, followed by sharing the same story using only verbal communication. This exercise will feel strange to them but will help identify the importance of both nonverbal and verbal communication. Students are encouraged to view other videos and must comment on at least one video. Through viewing other videos, providing comments to others, and receiving comments, students will gain a deeper appreciation for both types of communication. Students then reflect on the task by providing feedback in the journal about their experience. 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. To help students retrieve crucial conversation and communication information and apply it, they’ll be asked to illustrate a personal difficult conversation they had using the model they were taught. 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.
My ever-evolving vision of this 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.
תגובות