1                 Identify an aspect of your educational practice which you would like to develop, and/or about which you have concerns. Consider what you would like to find out to help you enhance this area of your work.

2                 Consult relevant journals (e.g. Medical Education, Nurse Education, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education) to find a paper which reports a piece of empirical research (not a meta-analysis or conceptual argument) which addresses the particular concern you have identified and appears useful and relevant to your work.

3                Choose some evaluation criteria to frame your critique of your chosen paper. There are numerous evaluation frameworks available for judging research; you will need to consider which criteria you think are most important and why.

4                Write your assignment which must include each of the following elements;

• Explanation of why you have chosen this particular paper (How does it relate to your educational practice? What specifically do you hope to learn from it? What you intend to do with the new knowledge you have gained?)
• Justification for your choice of criteria to drive the critique (why have you chosen these particular criteria out of all the frameworks available?). The criteria themselves should be listed in an appendix
• Your critique of the research reported in your chosen article –this should form the bulk of your assignment. The specific elements of your critique will be based on the criteria you have chosen, however it is expected that these will include consideration of the appropriateness, strengths (quality) and limitations of the research design (NB design usually includes: research objectives /questions;  methodology;  data collection and analysis methods; ethical considerations). Your critique should be balanced.
• Your views about the usefulness and/or significance of the reported results in relation to your education practice and to the field more broadly. (E.g. What insights did you get from the study? Did it answer the questions you had in mind when you chose it? To what extent? Have you used it/do you intend to use the study to inform your practice? How?)

Overall the assignment should demonstrate your ability to use appropriate theoretical models and principles from the literature we have discussed during this module to judge a piece of research relevant to your educational practice. It should demonstrate that you have met the learning outcomes of this Module.

 Formative assessment

Peer feedback will be provided on-line and in the sessions. Discussions on the set readings will enable the tutor to provide formative feedback on participants’ developing understanding. You will be expected to present a draft of your assignment to your tutor for formative feedback within a pre-decided time scale.