For this assessment task, you will demonstrate your ability to apply theory to practice with an emphasis on clinical reasoning in complex cases. You will complete an oral presentation about your clinical decision making for a complex client while on your work integrated learning experience. This oral presentation will focus on one client only.

As part of this assessment, you must present:

1. A short introduction about your client and their background information. This may include (but is not limited to) their educational or clinical context, diagnoses, therapy history, developmental profile, and current educational/therapy goals.
2. The assessments (formal or informal or both) you completed with the client including your reasoning for choosing these assessments and/or approach. Your reasoning should refer to the client’s profile, the service delivery context, and the literature.
3. A summary of the assessment results including your analysis and interpretation. In this part, you should demonstrate your ability to integrate multiple sources of information to form an initial conclusion or hypothesis about the client’s communication/swallowing profile.
4. A summary of your intervention plan for the client including your reasoning for choosing the therapy targets/goals and approaches. You may make reference to the clinical context (including priorities of the context), assessment results, client profile, clinical educator feedback, the literature, theory and/or other relevant factors.
5. As part of your intervention plan, you must explain and demonstrate one therapy activity in detail. You may choose to do this ‘live’ in class or record the demonstration in advance to include as part of your presentation.

At the end of your presentation, you must answer questions about the decisions made in your case from your lecturer. Your answers to these questions should demonstrate your knowledge of the case including theory/evidence, and clinical reasoning. The time limit for this presentation is 15 minutes. Therefore, at 15 minutes you will be stopped, and the content previously presented will be graded. Students will not be penalised for presenting under the time limit.

Your presentation must be accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation.

You are expected to be at “Approaching Proficiency“ level to pass this assessment task. These criteria are informed by Speech Pathology Australia's Professional Standards. 

Criteria one will assess your ability to:

• Provide accurate, succinct and relevant information regarding your client
• Demonstrate an understanding of the theory underlying the assessment and management of clients with complex needs
• Demonstrate the use of clinical reasoning in the assessment and management of clients with complex needs
• Engage the audience by clearly demonstrating and explaining a therapy activity used for a client with complex needs

Criteria two will assess your ability to:

• Utilise an engaging and professional PowerPoint presentation that demonstrates appropriate grammar, punctuation and word choice
• Communicate clearly and coherently throughout the presentation without the use of notes
• Demonstrate professional behaviour throughout the presentation including dressing appropriately
• Adhere to the APA 7th edition referencing guidelines

For this assessment task, you will demonstrate your ability to engage with a community to understand the needs of that community and create a resource to support their identified requirements. 

A brief description of the assessment task is outlined below, full details are on the Assessment tile on Moodle.

This assessment task comprises two parts, Part A is a group task and is worth 60% of the final mark. Part B is an individual task and is worth 40% of the final mark. 

Part A

As part of this assessment, you must:

1. Identify an online community with speech pathology needs.

This could be:
a.    Carers or families of people with speech pathology needs
b.    People with personal speech pathology needs

2.   Describe the online community (this should include the actors /facilitators/barriers).

3.   Engage (passively) with the content on that community site to determine the main speech pathology needs of that community. 

4.   Create a resource that could support that community's needs. 

Part B

For part B you must:

1. Discuss the needs of that community and justify it according to the evidence base. 

2. Write a critical reflection (using the D-I-O format) that addresses one of the following topics:

• Your predictions of what the community might need compared to what they actually needed
• Why the community members sought an online community for support
• The process by which you researched the needs of a community and how that process could be used in the future as a practicing clinician.

You will be marked against two criteria.

Criteria one (Part A)  will be converted to a grade out of 60. It will assess your ability to:

•    Identify an appropriate online community
•    Provide an accurate, succinct description of the community and their needs
•    Identify the goals of the community and the barriers/facilitators to engaging with that community
•    Create a resource (appropriate, accurate and effective ) that will meet the needs of the community. 
•    Demonstrate high-level, error-free, written expression, and organisation of content that is appropriate for the assessment task/audience.

Criteria two (Part B) will be converted to a grade out of 40. It will assess your ability to:

•    Justify the resource in relation to the literature and evidence base.
•    Demonstrate the use of critical written reflective practice.
•    Demonstrate high-level, error-free, written expression, and organisation of content.
•    Demonstrate the use of appropriate referencing and APA-7th formatting through the assessment task

This term you will complete clinical work-integrated learning experiences. Students will attend either one or two sites, for a total of 14 days or equivalent . These placements will provide you with the opportunity to develop your practical, clinical and professional skills across a range of practice areas, in a variety of settings and with different caseloads in preparation for your final block placements in Term 2.

At the end of each work-integrated learning experience, you are expected to demonstrate competence that is "Approaching proficiency" level as informed by CBOS and the Professional Standards.

Further information regarding the expectations when participating in work integrated learning experiences, such as dress code, attendance requirements and mandatory checks (pre-clinical requirements) can be found in the Speech Pathology Practice Education Handbook, an electronic copy of which will be made available through the SPCH14009 Moodle page. Note that all pre-clinical requirements, as mentioned in the Speech Pathology Practice Education Handbook (and also stipulated on the online SONIA database) must be completed prior to commencing a placement and must remain current for the duration of the placement. Any student who fails to comply will risk not being permitted to commence their placement, which may therefore affect their ability to complete this assessment task. Further information and instructions regarding all mandatory checks (pre-clinical requirements) can be found on the SONIA database or obtained by contacting the Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) team via email wil-hmas@cqu.edu.au 

This assessment task requires you to complete 14 days or equivalent of sessional clinical placements, this may be completed across one or more placement sites with multiple practice educators. For each placement you attend, you will be assessed against specific elements included in each of the three domains of the Professional Standards. By the end of each placement, you are required to demonstrate competence that is approaching entry-level across the following domains:

1. Professional Conduct
2. Reflective Practice and Life-Long Learning
3. Speech Pathology Practice

As outlined by CBOS, the entry level student displays the following attributes:

• Performs the majority of his or her work independently and competently.
• Seeks support if the situation is new or a number of features about the client or workplace setting combine to create complexity.
• Identifies the meaningful aspects of problems and integrates these to generate a number of logically possible conclusions. Conclusions/actions will be modified with new information.
• Prioritises appropriately.
• Maintains a focus on the client or situation.
• Carries out his or her work in an efficient and timely manner.

Note that these placements are not assessed via COMPASS Online. For each individual placement, you will instead be assessed using a separate, paper-based marking rubric which includes elements and behavioural descriptors that have been extracted from CBOS and the Professional Standards. This rubric can be found on the SPCH14009 Moodle page. 

Both the pass and failure criteria that apply to clinical placements, including descriptors of terms such as "approaching proficiency", are described in detail in the Speech Pathology Practice Education Handbook. Students should familiarise themselves with these criteria as they will form the basis of the determination as to whether a student has passed or failed this assessment task. As stated in the Practice Education Handbook, the Practice Education Coordinator will make the final decision regarding a student's results based on all available evidence relating to the student's performance whilst completing each placement.

In order to pass this assessment task, students must pass each individual placement they complete as part of this unit.

During the sessional placements that occur as part of this unit, you must complete a Work Integrated Learning Experience Log form (WIL Log) showing the clinical experiences/hours you accumulated across your placement/s. After each placement, this form must be signed by both you and your practice educator. You must then submit these forms via Moodle no later than one week following the completion of your final sessional placement. The specific record form that is to be used, and the instructions for completion will be available on the SPCH14009 Moodle site.

It should be noted that Speech Pathology Australia (SPA) does not specify the number of clinical hours that students must complete during the course of any Australian university’s Speech Pathology program. SPA instead places the focus on the minimum level of competence, skills and knowledge required for entry into the workforce as a qualified and competent speech pathologist. CQUniversity’s approach is consistent with SPA’s philosophy and therefore does not have a specific requirement regarding the minimum number of clinical hours each student must complete by the end of the Speech Pathology course. Submission of the record form for this unit is therefore a pass/fail assessment requirement. You should be aware that you are also expected to track this data and keep copies for your own records, as evidence of clinical hours may be required if you are requested to provide evidence of clinical experience when applying for work as a speech pathologist overseas.

In order to pass this assessment task, you must complete and submit a copy of the WIL Log form provided to you by your Unit Coordinator, within one week of completing each placement. Instructions for completion will be available on the record form that will be provided to you at the beginning of term.