Using the student voice to transform medical student portfolios

Abstract

Presenter: Charlotte Hammerton and Carys Phillips, UCL Medical School

The UCLMS clinical portfolio, which encompasses a range of mandatory activities involving assessment, feedback and reflection, was unpopular among students. Further investigation through focus groups revealed students perceived the portfolio as a “tick box” exercise that yielded delayed, unhelpful feedback and often involved chasing “sign offs”. They found both the forms and requirements unclear, inconsistent and complex.

Working with students, educators and the technology department we employed a new platform to transform the portfolio. We focused on enabling in person, immediate feedback using clear, simple forms, aligned to requirements and consistent across years. Students were at the core of development and testing to create a portfolio for learning, not only an assessment of learning. The portfolio is now used successfully with 57% of 29,277 forms completed in real time. We will discuss the challenges of this significant change, including incorporating external requirements, student and educator perspectives, feedback and future plans.

Presentation

We continued to expand on the topic in the roundtable discussion, which we have also uploaded in a separate post.