Development and evaluation of a student-centred multimedia self-assessment instrument forsocial-communicative competence

Communication plays an important role in many professional contexts. This is especially true for students in the field of social work. The aim of this study was to develop formative, self-regulated multimedia self-assessment of social-communicative competencies for social work students. First, a pilot study was conducted to gain insight into the students’ specific characteristics. This insight was used to design guidelines for the development of the assessment instrument in order to tune these to the students’ perceptions, instructional preferences, and personalities and thus enhancing the students’ enthusiasm to use the selfassessment instrument. This might increase the chance for successful implementation of this new form of assessment. A first version of a multimedia test was developed. A quality expert meeting was organised to gain insight into expert judgements on the quality of the test and to obtain indications for improvement of the assessment. A second version of the test was constructed and put on the Internet. Nearly 400 students completed the assessment and expressed their opinions on this new way of communication assessment. We found it was possible to test social-communicative competence by means of multimedia, with the help of digital video. The use of Internet makes assessments available at any time to fit curriculum needs and also resolves time and space constraints. Our conclusion was that the multimedia test is reasonably valid. All students reported having liked the multimedia assessment