The student experience of piloting multi-modal performance feedback tools in health and social care practice (work)-based settings

The aim of this study was to evaluate newly developed performance feedback tools from the student perspective. The tools were innovative in both their mode of delivery and the range of stakeholders they involved in the feedback process. By using the tools in health and social care settings, students were able to engage in interprofessional assessment of common competences and obtain performance feedback from a range of stakeholders not commonly involved in work-based learning; these included peers and service users. This paper discusses the ways in which the performance feedback tools were developed by a collaborative programme and compares their delivery, across a wide range of professions and work-based settings, in paper-based, web-based and mobile formats. The tools were evaluated through a series of profession-specific focus groups involving 85 students and 7 professions. The data were analysed thematically and reduced to three key categories: mode of delivery, assessment tool dynamics and work-based issues. These will be discussed in detail. The students agreed that the structured way of capturing and documenting feedback from several sources would support their practice placement learning. The reflective nature of the tools and the capacity for guiding reflection was also welcomed. The concepts of gaining service user, peer and/or interprofessional feedback on performance were new to some professions and evoked questions of reliability and validity, alongside appreciation of the value they added to the assessment process.     

Beyond advocacy: Developing an evidence base for regional creative industry strategies

This paper examines several aspects of the developing evidence base for regional creative industry policy making in England and argues that the focus of the current research base is disproportionately determined by the demand for evidence for advocacy purposes. It offers an evaluation that challenges the basis on which some of the central sector advocacy claims have been made and argues that unless the evidence base is allowed to develop beyond advocacy, then the claims for evidence-based policy will be seriously compromised.     

Stimulus change and complexity in exploratory behavior

It has recently been proposed (Fowler, 1967, 1971) that the incentive value of novelty can be defined in terms of stimulus change. An experiment is reported which examines the relationship between changes in complexity and the consequent exploratory behavior. Following extended exposure to a midcomplexity stimulus, rats were allowed to choose between a stimulus change and the now familiar midcomplexity stimulus. For some Ss the change was to a stimulus of higher complexity, and for others the change was to a lower complexity stimulus. The results suggest that physical stimulus changes to a stimulus of greater complexity is a more effective novel stimulus than physical stimulus changes to lesser complexity, although both changes may function as incentives.