On 5 November 2016, Dr. Maggie Zhao, Director of T&LEMU, delivered an oral presentation on “assessment in workplace: investigating a multi-source and multi-method approach to enhance student learning in clinical practicum” at the Frontiers in Medical and Health Sciences Education 2016 conference, and won the best oral presentation award which was selected by internationally recognized scholars. The theme of this year’s conference is “promoting excellence in assessment”, with an aim at exploring the effectiveness of assessment in medical and health education.

The presentation reports an ongoing study about the assessment in medical and health education, which is funded by HKU Teaching Development Grant. This study aims to assess clinical practicum in a pilot study by applying a multi-source and multi-method assessment approach and to develop an assessment toolkit for clinical practicum that could serve as an exemplar for the clinical disciplines that share similar practicum features. Approximately 200 third year nursing students participated in the study during the summer of 2016. Findings from this project offer support in how to use assessments as tools to enhance student learning, facilitate the provision of feedback, and promote the high quality standard of reliability, validity and fairness of assessing clinical practicum.