Enhancing communicative spaces for fieldwork education in an inland regional Australian university

Figures & data

Table 1. Debate flow chart.

Phase	Activity	Duration
1	Recruitment and brainstorm activity	1 month
2	Four topical debates	4 months
3	Critical appraisal	1 month

Figure 1 Participation pattern.

Table 2. Debating themes and their questions.

Themes	Questions
Quality fieldwork placements and assessment	What constitutes a quality placement? Is there a place for critical dialogue in FWED between student, supervisor and coordinator? What is a reasonable standard? What is shared understanding of professional standards? Why standardise FWED if it is complex, diverse and contextual?
Effective teaching for students’ and teachers’ learning	How can we ensure that students, coordinators and supervisors all have a quality experience and learn well? How do you transfer the classroom environment to ‘distance education’? How do you get reality in the material you deliver? How to prepare students and supervisors so all have a quality experience and learn? How can you ensure learning is taking place with large cohorts? How to support student learning especially of those who are at risk of failing in a DE accelerated program? How not to silence otherness and difference? How to work cooperatively with other institutions to further the fieldwork opportunities for students and address common challenges? What is a good outcome for students?
Cost and recruitment	Who controls payment for placement supervisors? Is it placement supervisors’ professional responsibility to supervise or is it an additional job task justifying their demand for payment? How can we deal with short‐term cancellations? How to recruit more placements? What is a true partnership between industry and uni? Should we recompense supervisors individually or rather industry use the money to supply space, equipment, education, release from work to educate and evaluate students? The only problem area we have is the huge payment students have to make via HECS during a period when they are not being taught on campus.
Assessment and supervision	How to ensure equitable, culturally sensitive and consistent supervision of our students on placements? How do others approach assessment in clinical/FWED and what strategies do they use to increase consistency in assessment? What is a good outcome for students? And for that matter what is a good outcome for uni (coordinators, schools)? What is the use and limitation of competency assessments? How to fail students; what do supervisors need to know, what skills do they need to fail someone appropriately?
Equity and engagement	What is a true partnership between industry and university like? How can we make student placements attractive to industry? How can we ensure equitable, culturally sensitive and consistent supervision of our students on placements?
International students and international placements	Why do some placements view ‘students with accents’ as a risk to customer relations? How can we reduce the language barrier with placement supervisors in different countries who speak languages other than English?
Career development and employability skills	Should a university Careers Service contribute directly, much more strategically, to the career development of ALL students (something to commence earlier than in the students’ final year of study)? Is there a link between a student’s personal career development and work integrated learning? Does CSU see any opportunities arising from pre‐ or post‐ fieldwork activities which might further enhance our students’ understanding and appreciation of what employers want?

Table 3. Debating topics.

First debating topic	A good budget ensures quality placements:In these economic rationalist driven and financially competitive times, the solution to ensure quality FWED experiences for students, placement supervisors and university coordinators lies in a generous budget
Second debating topic	To provide good assessments is a shared responsibility between the assessor and the student:Only the assessor (placement supervisor) and the student can make a fair assessment of student learning while on placement. University coordinators should not get involved and question assessment results
Third debating topic	Engagement between university and industry:Students learn best about work on placements when university staff establish good professional relationships with host agencies How do you make connections, establish shared working relationships with your host agencies? What and who is involved in this relationship? Should this be the role of general or academic staff? How does this work in your school?
Fourth debating topic	Career development learning greatly enhances the goals of practice‐based education

Table 4. Qualitative evaluation data.

Questions	Responses
What did you like most about the debate?	Hearing other people’s ideas. It is important to share about these demanding aspects of courses. Enjoyed the contributions from the debators with a wide range of experience. Discussions about actual practice. Jockeying back and forth which arose from differences of opinion (that’s debating I guess). Hearing from others and sharing experiences – it was informative, interesting and beneficial. That there is so much going on, so much experience and so much to learn from each other. I would like to capture so much of what I have seen and heard in the discussions.
What did you dislike the most?	How the discussion sometimes churned into educational babble complete with references and quotes, typically later in any thread. It was hard to wade through all the messages and keep a set of mental connections going in relation to who people were, what the topic was, and what aspects they were addressing at the time (as well as what comments they were responding to). It was difficult to find time. [Online] forum was not user friendly and difficult to navigate.
What would you change?	Add a space for participants to introduce each other so we know who is participating. Send weekly reminder email. Tell participants to read papers, provide hyperlinks to papers; this was not obvious.
What was the most valuable thing you learnt from the debate?	Learning, thinking and reflecting collectively on what we do and think we are doing. That my strategies were being trialled in other courses. Noticing similarities and differences was comforting. Hearing about experiences of people from other courses.