Module 6: Assessing Students on WPL
Placement
Reflective Diary
This booklet provides an opportunity to reflect upon and respond to the
sections of this module.
The value of keeping a reflective diary is that it provides a record of your
thoughts and ideas. This is useful for consolidating your thoughts about
WPL supervision and also for communicating your role with students
and colleagues in the workplace.
Section 2: Preparing for Assessment
Reflection 1
How ready and willing are you to formally assess students?
What do you need or might you need to assess students confidently and competently?
Training? Tools? Supports?
Reflection 2
Are there aspects of assessment that you feel more confident undertaking? For example are
you most confident when assessing students’ technical skills and less confident when
assessing professional behaviours?
What implications does this have for how you might carry out your assessment role?
Reflection 3
Given everything theoretically that could be assessed, what should be?
Given the realities of your workplace and role, what really can be assessed?
Reflection 4
What ways can you think of to engage colleagues in the planning and preparation necessary
to make WPL assessment at your place of work relevant, effective, and enriching?
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Section 3: Establishing criteria and processes
Reflection 1
How could you better familiarise yourself with WPL placement assessment process, tasks,
and criteria?
How can you achieve assessment requirements while completing your organisational work
targets?
Reflection 2
How current and relevant is WPL assessment at your place of work?
What can you do to ensure its relevance and currency?
Reflection 3
How SMART are the learning goals and assessment tasks at your place of work?
What can you do to make them SMARTer?
Reflection 4
What ways can you think of to improve the coordination and communication across
practitioners with respect to WPL assessment?
How clear is everyone on their respective roles and responsibilities?
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Section 4: Improving rigour, relevance and transparency
Reflection 1
Who could or should be involved in reviewing and revising assessment tasks, criteria, and
processes?
How might the different perspectives of various stakeholders contribute to the quality of the
assessment process?
Reflection 2
What are some of the ways you can increase the time spent assessing students, the variety
of tasks assessed, and the range of inputs and perspectives on their learning and
performance?
Reflection 3
For any learning task relevant to students on WPL placement in your unit, identify three to
five possible assessment tasks that could demonstrate depth and breadth of learning.
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Section 5: Facilitating learning through assessment
Reflection 1
What ways can you think of to involve students on placement more deeply in the
assessment process?
Reflection 2
What are some of the best ways you can think of to ascertain that a student on WPL has
developed an important capability?
Reflection 3
What opportunities exist in your workplace to assess student learning in ways that are
relevant, authentic, practical and meaningful?
Reflection 4
What work products or services offered by your unit would be suitable to showcase
designated aspects of student learning?
Reflection 5
Take a moment to think about your preferred assessment tasks and strategies. How do they
relate to the importance you place on different types of student learning?
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Reflection 6
How many sources of feedback in your workplace can you think of?
How might you best arrange ready and reliable student access to these sources?
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Section 6: Sharing responsibility for assessment
Reflection 1
Should you question your beliefs concerning students’ roles and capabilities with respect to
self and peer assessment?
How might these beliefs influence the way you approach student self and peer assessment?
Reflection 2
How ready, willing, and able are you to share responsibility for assessment with students?
How might you ensure this transition is as smooth and effective as possible?
Reflection 3
How would you link reflection and self-assessment in your every day practice?
How comfortable are you with facilitating student reflection?
What are some of the things you can do to ensure students meaningfully reflect on
performance and feedback?
Reflection 4
What tools, techniques, and training are required to help students become accurate selfassessors?
Where can you access them?
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Reflection 5
What kinds of authentic learning tasks and projects that require students / peers to work
together provide opportunities for peer-assessment?
Reflection 6
How ready, willing, and able are you to embrace reciprocal assessment?
What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of reciprocal assessment?
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Section 7: Managing strong emotions
Reflection 1
Recall a time when you gave or received critical feedback.
How did you feel?
How did you cope?
Reflection 2
Thinking critically, what was done well, and what might have been done more productively?
What lessons from that experience might you take forward into assessment situations with
your WPL students?
Reflection 3
What can you do to become more systematic, comprehensive, and objective in your
assessment and feedback provision?
Reflection 4
What are some of the ways you can create a healthier, more supportive environment that
reduces anxiety and helps you and your students deal with the heightened emotions
associated with assessment and feedback?
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Reflection 5
What are the strengths and weaknesses of your workplace with respect to assessment and
feedback?
How might you make it even more productive, supportive, and encouraging?
Reflection 6
Think about how you handle stressful situations such as giving and receiving critical
feedback.
What are some strategies you might employ to improve your capacity to remain calm,
focused, and objective?
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Section 8: Enhancing feedback effectiveness
Reflection 1
What are some of the best and worst examples from your previous experience giving or
receiving feedback?
What can you learn from this to help you prepare to give the most productive feedback?
Reflection 2
Given the learning tasks students will undertake, what are some of the specific kinds of
feedback that you think will be most helpful?
Reflection 3
What situations and learning tasks might allow for multiple sources of feedback?
Whom might you enlist to help provide feedback, and what can you do to ensure this
process works effectively?
Reflection 4
What tools and strategies do you plan to use to help students take greater charge of their
learning and become empowered and active participants in the feedback process?
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Section 9: Assisting students to to act on feedback
Reflection 1
What are your beliefs and assumptions with respect to students’ readiness to accept
responsibility for learning and assessment?
What can and should you do to empower students to become more self-regulating?
Reflection 2
How might you structure and facilitate dialogue with students that fosters their mindfulness
with respect to learning and self-assessment, and gradually develops their skills and
discipline in self-regulation?
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Section 10: Planning and critical reflection
Reflection 1
What are some of the first things that come to mind with respect to your experience of
assessment and feedback for learning…?

What went well; what not so well?

What would you really like to achieve with assessment and feedback?
Reflection 2
Who was involved in assessing students and / or providing them feedback?
How might you obtain their perspectives on the effectiveness of assessment and feedback?
Reflection 3
How well have you done as a deliberate, mindful, and reflective practitioner with respect to
your role as assessor and feedback provider?
If you identify any areas of improvement, how might you go about improving your
effectiveness?
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