The concern to develop rigorous techniques of assessment for sandwich placement performance seems to be motivated by a number of considerations. Assessment, as is often argued, helps to give the placement, and the experiential learning, which occurs, in the placement, due academic weight, and hence the integration of theory and practice would be given a higher priority. Furthermore, assessment of placement performance is occasionally implicitly used as a proxy for the evaluation of the idea of sandwich placements per se. it is argued here that none of these motives for assessment is strong enough to justify the disruption to placements that an undue emphasis on assessment may produce, and that the final reason, i.e. that assessment stands proxy for evaluation, is just plain illogical. It can be argued therefore, that the use of assessment is to facilitate genuine, meaningful experiential learning; part of a ‘conversation’ between students and teachers (whether placement tutor or on-placement supervisor), which is aimed at an ongoing negotiation of significant personal objectives and an appraisal of the students’ success in fulfilling them. In addition, that the summative assessment processes, as a human and social enterprise, involves three phases: 1. the perception of relevant students’ behaviour; 2. the judgement as to its quality as placement performance, and 3. the communication of this assessment to an audience. When analyzing these processes in detail, it can be deducted that they are fraught eith difficulty, and that they certainly ought not to be used to provide the basis for quantitative measure. In addition, these problems are not amenable to technical solution, that is, there is no possible measuring technique, which could magically render the human process of erecting a scale of measurement of performance. Yet it is justifiable to require an overall report of placement performance. Hence, it is suggested that a qualitative account includes a transcript of

The purpose of this article is to describe the outcomes of a study that investigated the embedding of a problem-based learning (PBL) instructional approach in traditional undergraduate teaching curriculum. This article reports the outcomes of the study, which involved two groups of full-time hotel and catering management sub-degree and degree students in face–to–face mode at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The results of the study suggest that students appreciate a self-directed approach to learning. The results also indicate that there are significant perceptual differences between the pre-PBL intervention scores and the post-PBL intervention scores. Furthermore, the outcome of student feedback indicates that students are willing to embrace PBL methods—methods based on student-centred learning as opposed to teacher-centred learning. The students in the study mainly experienced traditional methods of teaching and learning during their education, and were accustomed to a teacher-led, passive style of learning. However, after exposure to PBL methods, students demonstrated that they were able to take a more pro-active role in their learning. Of the classroom activities that students participated in, group activities rated the highest. Qualitative feedback from the students also highlights that they value communicative and interactive learning activities more than the traditional lecture-led method of learning. One negative finding was that students were concerned about the amount of time required for the PBL approach to learning compared with traditional lecture-led learning methods.
[Copyright © 2004 Elsevier.]