Simulations for the Assessment of Counselling Skills

Assessment of students’ communication skills after a course in counselling, in which the students are prepared for work practice, requires another assessment method than the traditional written examination. In this paper we describe the construction and evaluation of simulations. The results of an investigation into the quality of the simulations show that they enable objective assessment of students’ mastery of skills in the situation which is simulated. In order to achieve generalisable scores, i.e. scores which indicate how well a student will perform in counselling interviews in general, more than one simulation has to be administered. Although the simulation is not an efficient instrument, its benefits are high: weaknesses in students’ performances will be detected so that remedial teaching can be offered, and clinical practice can be preserved for counsellors with a less than sufficient ability in counselling skills