Search results

This study aims to report the design, development and evaluation of a digital quality assurance application aimed at improving and ensuring the quality of assessment programmes in higher education.

The application was developed using a design-based research (DBR) methodology. The application’s design was informed by a literature search and needs assessment of quality assurance stakeholders to ensure compliance with daily practices and accreditation requirements. Stakeholders from three study programmes evaluated the application.

As part of the development of the application, module- and programme-level dashboards were created to provide an overview of the programme’s outcomes, assessment methods, assessment metrics, self-evaluated quality indicators and assessment documents. The application was evaluated by stakeholders at the module and programme levels. Overall, the results indicated that the dashboards aided them in gaining insight into the assessment programme and its alignment with underlying assessments.

Visualisation of the assessment programme’s structure and content identifies gaps and opportunities for improvement, which can be used to initiate a dialogue and further actions to improve assessment quality.

The application developed facilitates a cyclical and transparent assessment quality assurance procedure that is continuously available to various stakeholders in quality assurance.

This study aims to investigate quality of feedback as offered by supervisor-assessors with varying levels of assessor expertise following assessment of performance in residency training in a health care setting. It furthermore investigates if and how different levels of assessor expertise influence feedback characteristics.

Experienced (n=18) and non-experienced (n=16) supervisor-assessors with different levels of assessor expertise in general practice (GP) watched two videotapes, each presenting a trainee in a “real-life” patient encounter. After watching each videotape, participants documented performance ratings, wrote down narrative feedback comments and verbalized their feedback. Deductive content analysis of feedback protocols was used to explore quality of feedback. Between-group differences were assessed using qualitative-based quantitative analysis of feedback data.

Overall, specificity and usefulness of both written and verbal feedback was limited. Differences in assessor expertise did not seem to affect feedback quality.

Results of the study are limited to a specific setting (GP) and assessment context. Further study in other settings and larger sample sizes may contribute to better understanding of the relation between assessor characteristics and feedback quality.

Findings suggest that even with supervisor-assessors with varying levels of assessor expertise who are trained in performance assessment and the provision of performance feedback, high-quality feedback is not self-evident; coaching “on the job” of feedback providers and continuous evaluation of feedback processes in performance management systems is crucial. Instruments should facilitate provision of meaningful feedback in writing.

The paper investigates quality of feedback immediately following assessment of performance, and links feedback quality to assessor expertise. Findings can contribute to improvement of performance management systems and assessments for developmental purposes.

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the development of an instrument designed to measure information‐seeking behaviour of undergraduate students during study assignments.

Literature research, internal consistency and reliability computed with Cronbach's Alpha (α), Factor Analyses with Varimax rotation, and item response theory form the approach to examining the subject.

Four scales were found within a 46‐item survey on information‐seeking behaviour: a ten‐item scale for applying search strategies (α=0.68), a 14‐item scale for evaluating information (α=0.74), a six‐item scale for referring to information (α=0.81) and a 12‐item scale for regulation activities when seeking information (α=0.75).

The four scales for information‐seeking behaviour can be used to monitor and evaluate this behaviour of students in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and theorize the process of managerial feedback in relation to change in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

This research embraces a qualitative methodology in the context of manufacturing SMEs. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, and observations conducted with various managers in six SMEs operating in three countries, it is argued that managers benefit more by using daily, ongoing, feedback as a trigger of change in their organizations.

The findings suggest that there is an overall view that managers appear to be reluctant to change existing processes using formalized feedback mechanisms, which runs counter-intuitive to the literature. In contrast, informal methods of feedback work better in enhancing organizational change. Moreover, another two features of feedback enhance this process, namely, benefits oriented and confidence oriented. As such, this study contributes to existing knowledge and practice by proposing a three-fold form of feedback through which managers expand their perspectives of feedback from feeding-back to feeding-forward thereby enhancing the opportunities of triggering change.

Feedback should merely be considered as a dynamic and socially constructed managerial practice. A practice where actors not only exchange information and share knowledge, but also act, react and interact with each other as they constantly rethinking the change process. The proposed aspect of feedback emphasizes knowledge therapeutically and in combination with the dialogical discourse (practical illustration) that increases the odds for capturing change as a natural, rather than exceptional.

Practitioners, as such, may wish to consider the terminology used when it comes to studying change and its implementation in a crisis context. Using deformalized managerial feedback mechanisms to tackle a formal phenomenon like “change” could help avoid employees perceiving a negative connotation, causing resistance or confusion and feeling threatened. Therefore, the authors suggest that practitioners, during development initiatives on modernizing or altering organizational processes, consider replacing the term “change” as a formal concept.

It is an investigation from an exploratory perspective in studying and understanding the causes, factors and modalities that trigger managerial feedback toward organizational change in manufacturing SMEs.