Assignment Guidelines

Introduction

Assignments are designed to consolidate your learning from courses and promote thinking around how you might implement what you have learnt in your own professional practice and the practice of others. In an assignment you are required to demonstrate professional and academic skills including good writing skills, providing evidence to support your statements, appropriate referencing and the evaluation of learning and practice.

The assignment is designed to:

1. Encourage you to reflect on your learning and how this may change your professional practice.
2. Provide you with a method to demonstrate that you have understood the course content and are able to implement it into your professional practice.
3. Allow you to dig deeper into a topic that is of particular relevance to you and your context.
4. Contribute to your profession. On achieving a pass we may identify that your work is of a sufficient standard to be published in Physiopedia (with your permission of course!) and be used by the physiotherapy community for teaching and learning purposes. This is a great opportunity to contribute to the profession and demonstrate your professional leadership!

Assignment requirements

To pass an assignment we expect a good level of academic writing. The assignment should:

1. Demonstrate evidence of learning from the course.  We must be able to see that you have reflected on your practice and how what you have learned has changed or will change your practice.  Read more about clinical reflection here.
2. Have academic integrity. The assignment must be your own work and not have previously been published. Make sure you know what academic integrity is.
3. Include at least THREE references to support what you have written. These references must be used appropriately, cited in the text where they support your statements and be listed in full at the end of your assignment. You must follow our referencing guidelines.
4. Must be written in English.  Unfortunately we do not have the resources to operate in all languages and can only mark English language writing. We are aware that some course participants will struggle writing in English, this is not a problem and will be taken into account when reviewing the submissions.

We are not looking for correct or incorrect answers! We are looking for the implementation of the knowledge, techniques and skills covered during the course and an engagement with the relevant literature. 

Submitting your assignment

• We recommend you write your assignment using Word or similar.
• Your assignment should be 1000-3000 words in length.
• You should submit your assignment online through the link in the course page in Physioplus.
• Please make sure you keep a copy for yourself when you submit.

Marking procedure

All submitted assignments are reviewed by the course team in relation to the assignment requirements mentioned above.  You will not receive a mark for your assignment, you will receive a pass or fail. Assignments of sufficient standard will receive a pass which will be added to your Physioplus activity log. 

Common reasons for failing that you should avoid:

1. Plagiarism.  If you have copied text from the internet, the course resources or from other participants submissions your assignment will be failed. We want to see a unique submission written in your own words.
2. No references or incorrect use of references. We expect your submission to use references like you would see in a journal article. Please be sure to follow the referencing guidelines.
3. Not following the assignment requirements.  If you have not followed these assignment guidelines your assignment will be failed.

Assignment options

You may be specifically asked to do one of the following types of assignment or you may be directed to choose one of the following types of assignment.  For which ever assignment type you do please make sure that you read the guidelines detailed below and ensure that you have done what has been instructed to do before you submit. 

Patient case study

A patient case study is an evidence based report of your interaction with a patient. You should use the following template:

1. Title - the title should be specific to and descriptive of this case.
2. Abstract - this is where you simply summarise your case study into a story which flows logically. It is a narrative that consists of a much shortened version of the whole paper. There are no headings within the narrative abstract.
3. Introduction - this is where you write about what is particularly interesting about the case and why. Should be supported with references.
4. Patient characteristics - this is where you describe the case in detail. The patient demographics, complaint that the patient has and any interventions that have already taken place.
5. Examination - this is where you provide information obtained from the history and results of clinical examination.  If using you should include classification systems here such as the ICF environment, personal, structure, functional and participation model , or the treatment based classification models.
6. Clinical Impression - this is where you describe your initial hypothesis of what was contributing to the patients symptoms. You should back up your clinical thoughts with referenced evidence.
7. Intervention/Management - this is where you clearly describe the care plan, as well as the care which was actually provided.
8. Outcome - this is where you describe the outcome of the intervention.
9. Discussion - In this section you should identify any questions that the case raises, implications for practice and summarise the clinical conclusions.
10. References - Only use references that you have read and understood, are cited in the text of the case study and support your writing.

See this excellent example of case study write up

Other references:

• More detailed guidelines for writing a case study
• Example case study in Physiopedia

Marking criteria: following the template, interventions supported by evidence, appropriate clinical conclusions

Physiopedia page

Contributing to Physiopedia is a great way to contribute to your profession.  The Physiopedia page that you write should relate to the topic of the course. Your Physiopedia page should be divided by subheadings, concisely written, supported by up-to-date published literature and referenced. It can also include media (copyright free images and youtube video) to enhance your writing as well as links to other Physiopedia pages and external resources to lead readers to other sources of knowledge. You can either choose to write a new page in Physiopedia of your choosing or review and update one of the existing pages.

Marking criteria: well structured and concisely written, inclusion of physiotherapy specific information, supported by evidence 

Knowledge Translation

One of the main challenges following a course is to transfer this knowledge.  As a physiotherapist you may wish to transfer your new knowledge to several different groups of people such as fellow physiotherapsists, other health care professionals, patients, carers etc.  Knowledge translation resources can take any forms such as an information leaflet, infographic, poster, presentation, handout, plan for phone app etc.  When you create a knowledge translation resource the resource should provide key messages that you think are important to share with your target population. Your assignment should also include an accompanying page that describes how and when you will use the resource and who it aims to help.

Marking criteria: correct key messages, appropriateness of communication, innovativeness