Teaching and evaluating graduate attributes in multimedia science based assessment tasks

Abstract

New media literacy is an important employability skill for the future workforce and particularly important for graduates in the Health and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Digital story telling is a widely recognised strategy to engage student learning. This project evaluated student perspectives of the value digital story telling in the context of graduate skills development, digital media capability and leading areas of concern. Forth-year Pharmacy students (n=92) from the University of South Australia and 2nd year Health Science Students (n=83) from Griffith University were surveyed. Overwhelmingly, students reported the assessment was fun and they enjoyed working creatively and in teams. They also reported the development of graduate qualities including problem solving (85%), critical thinking (82%), oral (91%) communication, team work (95%) and time management (90%). For educators interested in this form of assessment, key considerations include mindfulness of level of anxiety this new form of activity may place on students, in particular their “need” for instruction and access to software and hardware. Students reporting anxiety or apprehension were most concerned about technical skill (87%) and the time required to complete the task (83%) that was linked to lower levels of computing ability (55% vs. 90% reporting as good/expert).