Click Here to view current information
Unit Synopsis
At a global level, there are rising demands for health and social care, limited resources and increasing inequalities in health. Community health assets and needs assessments have a vital part to play, enabling practitioners, managers and policymakers to identify those in greatest need; the physical, economic, social and cultural assets available within the community; and to ensure that health care resources are used to maximise health improvement. For health promotion practitioners, the ability to conduct a community health assessment is a core skill. You will be introduced to the different types of community assets and needs assessments that can be undertaken with local communities. You will examine the history and role of community assets and needs assessments and review a range of methods that can be used to implement and evaluate assets and needs assessments in local communities. You will have the opportunity to complete a community profile and also undertake a community assets and needs assessment.
Details
| Level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 2 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 2 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
48-credit unit pre-requisite Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 1 - 2025
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Presentation | 25% |
| 2. Group Work | 40% |
| 3. Report | 35% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site.
Term 1 - 2025 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 30.00% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 34.48% response rate.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: SUTE
Some students found the Moodle tiles and modular design difficult when planning their study.
Improve Moodle design, making greater use of headings and provide students with the opportunity to mark activities as "done". Scaffold the "modular" design of the unit in early tutorials so that students are clear about learning to work at their own pace. Reduce the number of Discussion forums.
Moodle is reorganised in Modules format.
Source: Student feedback and personal reflection
Marking criteria are not clear enough to guide students.
Revise marking criteria.
Marking criteria were revised.
Source: SUTE
Some students found the volume of content to be excessive, particularly with respect to the number of assessment tasks.
In 2024, the volume of content was reduced despite not being flagged as an issue in previous years. A redesign of Assessment task 2 tasks may address the issue of "volume".
Contents were revised.
Source: Teaching team evaluation and student feedback.
Assessment task 2 presented problems around teamwork.
Redesign Assessment task 2 to be less complex.
Assessment 2 was re-designed.
Source: UC feedback
Students from non-public health disciplines have difficulty using the community based lens for this unit.
Scaffold the "community lens" in the first module so students are clear about how this applies in assets and needs assessments.
Materials were simplified.
Source: UC feedback
Some students found teamwork challenging
Provide an improved introduction to working in teams early in the term and make the expectations for team engagement explicit.
Groups were supported with one on one meeting.
Source: UC feedback
Some students had the expectation that they would be given immediate on-on-one coaching.
Make expectations for communication with the lecturer explicit from the start of term, including CQU's expected turnaround times and the need for all course-related communication to be via the Discussion Forums.
Students were offered one on one meeting with coordinator.
Source: SUTE Unit Comments Report
Found the module and assessment contents to be too cluttered and made it confusing and worried most of the times. Some of the reading links didn't work. The assessment requirements were made a lot clearer by more concise information via separate announcements on Moodle from the coordinator who took over from week three.
The evaluation feedback indicates a need to refine the Moodle content and assessment information to enhance clarity and support student learning.
In Progress
Source: SUTE Unit Comments Report
The unit needs to be completely restructured. The Moodle is hard to navigate due to the organisation of resources, I could never remember where anything was, it is not clear .
This suggests that a complete refresh of the unit is needed to provide clear, effective and easy-to-navigate resources to facilitate student engagement and learning.
In Progress
Source: SUTE Unit Comments Report
Prefer the week by week content sections instead of the mixed weeks. The assessments were not clear and often confusing. Too much mixing of group work, solo work within the group work and working as a group but submitting separately.
Consideration of weekly content breakdown.
In Progress
Source: SUTE Unit Comments Report
I think the group assessment needs some work. The roles don't really make sense for what the assignment is. It doesn't make sense to our group to have a writer role when everyone is writing their own assessment.
Assessments will be reviewed for the next offering.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Argue the importance of community assets and needs assessment as the foundation of effective health promotion.
- Examine how determinants of health are incorporated into community assets and needs assessments.
- Determine how various health promotion theories and frameworks influence different sources of information in community assets and needs assessments.
- Apply culturally appropriate methods and models to assess the assets and needs of a community and facilitate knowledge transfer and advocacy
- Implement different collaborative methods for the analysis and prioritisation of information obtained through community assets and needs assessments.
- Explain how ethical considerations are applied in a community assets and needs assessment context
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 1 - Presentation | • | • | ||||
| 2 - Group Work | • | • | • | • | • | • |
| 3 - Report | • | • | • | • | • | |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 1 - Communication | • | • | • | • | ||
| 2 - Problem Solving | • | • | ||||
| 3 - Critical Thinking | • | • | • | |||
| 4 - Information Literacy | • | |||||
| 5 - Team Work | • | • | • | • | ||
| 6 - Information Technology Competence | • | |||||
| 7 - Cross Cultural Competence | • | • | ||||
| 8 - Ethical practice | • | • | • | • | ||
| 10 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures | • | |||||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | |