Assessment in Practice
Two students who were nursing majors developed separate slide shows concerning the forms of writing in the nursing field. One focuses on forms of CMC such as texting and IMing, and the other describes two forms used by nurses to communicate patient information. Each slide show is approximately six (6) minutes; so, rather than detail assessment of an entire slide show, I describe attributes of particular slides within each slide show, with student permission, and criteria associated with their assessment and connections to multimodal theory and the guidelines identified by Murray, Sheets and Williams (2010) here.
Stacy (all names are pseudonyms) developed a slide show in which she discusses a variety of forms of writing in the nursing field, including the use of texting. The medical field uses CMC a variety of ways (Hazelwood, 2008; Leap, 2010; Mace, 2008; Sindel, 2009; Wortsman and Crupi, 2009), and Stacy describes texting as one way it uses CMC.
One of the most compelling slides visually illustrates this range of writing, emphasizing a texting device set to a texting dictionary for medical terms (click on image to open slide in PowerPoint, then activiate):
This slide integrates images of print-linguistic writing (upper and lower left), templated writing (the form in the upper right) and the acronyms in the center. While the slide also shows images of other forms of writing that nurses do, the center image, which is also the largest, calls attention to the use of texting abbreviations that have become accepted forms in the medical field. Swarts (2006) observed that, “the affordances of mobile technologies can disrupt ecological conditions of sense making in ways that may not have been true of previous generations of information technology” (p. 197). However, texting in the medical field, evidently, has evolved to the point that there is now an ‘official’ accepted use of abbreviations for various medical terms. This slide demonstrates that the student has learned of these conventions unique to the medical field and that she would use as a nursing professional. The sizing and placement of the image on the slide draws attention to it for rhetorical effect.
Emma developed a presentation concerning a range of writing that various professionals do, and she refers to a couple of forms specific to nursing. Standardized forms are used in many professions to faciliitate quick review of the information. Such templates help to organize information as well as present it concisely. The slide below illustrates a particular form that nurses must complete on a very regular basis.
The entire slide shows the complete form, and each portion of the form is noted in green text. This helps the viewer understand particular parts of the form as she discusses it. This is a very good use of space, as she shows the entire form on a single slide, and still has room for the annotations. Also, in the narration for this slide, Emma acknowledges that this form represents one of the most important forms of documentation that nurses complete, as it provides a record of interaction with a given patient and can be used as legal documentation of what happened. In the audio narrative she refers to the Web site, “AllNurses.com” as the source of the information she is reporting and includes the URL of the site from where she copied the form itself at the bottom of the slide, demonstrating effective citation and documentation of outside readings. Additionally, each slide show ends with a slide listing the sources the student used.
Another form that Emma includes is what is called “Nurses Notes." Emma uses a list with a brief description of each item on the slide, and she uses the narration to describe attributes of the form and its use in practice. Again, the listing makes good use of the space on the slide; however, there seems to be inconsistency with the spacing between items in the list. In the narration, Emma refers to information, from a site that she documents on the slide, indicating that nurses use this form to identify important attributes affecting treatment and care of specific patients through a standardized tool. Emma also points out that it takes time to master the skill of composing Nurses Notes. Even though the categories act as a template to guide content, the nursing student still has to learn how to compose quality notes that others can understand and use. However, the audio for the slide is cut off at the end; so, the timing of the slide needs to be adjusted to allow the narration to end before transitioning to the next slide.
Emma also describes documentation associated with telenursing, which involves nurses answering phones to respond to patient concerns. With each call received, the nurse must document a number of items. She shows a chart that illustrates the breakdown of medical fields associated with telenursing:
The legend helps the viewer understand which color represents which field, which is reinforced with text for each section of the pie chart. She also documents from where she took the chart just underneath the chart. However, she seems to include some peripheral items that ought not be on the slide. There is a "5)" just under the title of the chart that is unexplained by either the slide or the accompanying audio narrative. This could be merely a proofreading issue, but a comment would point it out to her as a distraction. In addition to explaining documentation associated with telenursing to the viewer in the audio with this slide, she wraps up her discussion of the forms of documentation used in nursing here as well. She could have used another slide summarizing the forms of documentation rather than use the same slide to conclude that portion of the PPT slide show.
The table below summarizes the
criteria I used in assessing these PPT slideshows:
|
|
MULTIMODAL DESIGN CRITERIA |
|
Focus |
Size of text/images |
|
Organization |
Use of space:
text/image/space balance |
|
Development |
Contrast between text/image
and background |
|
Mechanics |
Synthesis of image and
narration |
These criteria combine elements identified by Murray, Sheets and Williams (2010) linking criteria traditionally used in writing assessment with elements associated with visual design assessment.