Some exciting developments are happening within the MSc Physiotherapy pre-reg programme. This programme allows students with a relevant previous degree to train as physiotherapists in a 2-year taught programme. One of the first modules the students undertake is the Health Promotion module. The aim of this module is for students to understand the role of physiotherapists as agents for health promotion. In addition, they have the opportunity to carry out a health promotion session with members of the public with 3 different organisations. These organisations include the Glasgow Science Centre, ROAR Active for Life, and People Services at Glasgow Caledonian University (the external stakeholders).

Today we all met as a group for the first time to discuss the marking and assessment of the module. Invited were students who took part in the module last year, staff from GSC, ROAR and People Services and the module team. While development of modules is usually done by module teams, this module uses an engagement-through-partnership approach (Higher Education Academy, 2014). This means that we aim to have partnership between students, lecturers and stakeholders at various stages of teaching. This can be during the module when students work in groups, but also at the development stage, as we did today.

The meeting provided an opportunity to explain assessment procedures from a university perspective, but also meant that stakeholders could ask questions about the students’ involvement. The students shared their experiences from last year and for suggestions how assessment could be done better this year.

As we only had one hour, we got through a limited amount of the assessment. The assessment is a continuous summative assessment of the stages of project management. The component discussed today was the ‘scoping stage’. The main point that came out of the discussion was how important it is that we all understand the language of the assessment. For example, what it means when students must use demographic data to assess the needs of the target audience. While I didn’t question what this meant from an academic perspective, it should be clear to all involved what this means. We will therefore include definitions and descriptions about what we understand each term on the assessment form to mean.

Likewise, we agreed that the 3 sites will provide students with information about their organisations and their activities in the context of health promotion. This will help students to understand what the organisation is about. This also means they can ask more focussed questions in the scoping meeting with the organisation.

Best part of the meeting for me was having everyone in the room and having the opportunity to find out what the people around the table think of our ideas and jointly coming up with better ways of doing the assessment. It’s what I like about partnership working!