Having students say they are 100% satisfied with what we offer is not an everyday occurrence.\u00a0 This is what happened in Clinical Language Sciences in the 2012 NSS.\u00a0 All of the students who responded said they definitely agreed with the statement: \u201cOverall, I am satisfied with the quality of the course\u201d.\u00a0 We were obviously extremely pleased, but wanted to reflect on what we do that might have led to this feedback and share our thoughts with colleagues at Reading.\u00a0 Looking through students\u2019 comments we picked out three themes in what our students had to say.<\/p>\n
Teaching and learning<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201c\u2026Standards of learning are high, we are challenged appropriately and I feel I am beginning to reach my potential.\u201d<\/p>\n While we are a small department there is a broad range of specialism across the academic staff.\u00a0 Having research active staff helps bring real enthusiasm to the subject which students experience, but this is not unique to CLS.\u00a0\u00a0 In addition, the\u00a0 majority of academic staff are also speech are language therapists whose engagement in research creates a culture of evidence-based practice which translates into an increasing emphasis on inquiry-based learning.\u00a0 This approach is well aligned to the aim of the programme which is to produce independent critically evaluative evidence-based practitioners.\u00a0 Applying new knowledge in this way is not easy and our students clearly enjoy rising to this challenge.\u00a0 For several years the clinical teaching team has used away-days\u00a0 in the summer to review clinical and professional modules. Following the positive experience of this informal process to developing our programme, a departmental away day last year included colleagues teaching on non-clinical modules where we were able to discuss how to better integrate academic and clinical modules to facilitate the students\u2019 development as evidence-based practitioners.<\/p>\n Departmental culture<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPassionate clinical staff \u2026 very supportive academic and administrative staff.\u201d \u201cStaff treat you with respect and value your opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n CLS is a small and closely knit department which fosters a collegiate atmosphere.\u00a0 Academic staff, the experienced therapists who act as clinical tutors, and administrative staff work closely together to deliver the programme. We recognise each other\u2019s complementary skills and knowledge; this mutual respect is embraced by the students.\u00a0 Students experience this in the Student-Staff Liaison Committee where they see they are listened to and their views are acted upon.\u00a0 Our relatively small numbers of students offer a lot of opportunity for group work which we readily seize to develop a critical dialogue with them about their practice, offer them the opportunity to try out their clinical problem-solving and provide evidence-based rationales for clinical decisions. These are essential clinical skills and over time we can see students growing into professionals in this space we provide for them to develop as independent practitioners. It is reflected in how they see themselves and how they see us.<\/p>\n Experience of clinical placements<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPlacements have been varied and interesting with the university giving us ample opportunity to feedback.\u201d \u201cAlso, a lot of hard work has gone into arranging placement, they are very varied.\u201d<\/p>\n Clinical placements are a key aspect of the programme and probably the most significant aspect of the student experience.\u00a0 Sourcing and supporting high quality clinical placements requires commitment from the clinical teaching team and experienced administrator\/s.\u00a0 Effective placement experience also requires good communication between the University clinical tutor, the placement educator outside the university, and the student as equal partners in the student\u2019s learning. \u00a0This is achieved by good initial educator training, on-going dialogue, and prompt action if issues arise. The quality and variety of our clinical placements has been achieved over many years of consistent collaborative working with partners in the NHS.\u00a0 A key process over the last five years has been the placement educator development ladder which offers a programme of Continuous Professional Development for all speech and language therapists that take our students on placement.\u00a0\u00a0 The ladder offers training for different levels of experience and expertise. Feedback on our training has been very positive and training has been requested by whole-services.\u00a0 Developing the educators\u2019 skills has increased availability, variety and quality of placements.\u00a0 This provides enhanced placement learning for our students and this very positive experience of placement is evidenced in NSS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having students say they are 100% satisfied with what we offer is not an everyday occurrence.\u00a0 This is what happened in Clinical Language Sciences in the 2012 NSS.\u00a0 All of the students who responded said they definitely agreed with the statement: \u201cOverall, I am satisfied with the quality of the course\u201d.\u00a0 We were obviously extremely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[204],"tags":[561,186],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}