Case study: Josh’s Assignment

Josh was a first year adult nursing student. He had achieved the academic requirements for admission to his nursing programme easily, with A level grades of A, A, B in English, psychology and philosophy respectively. He approached the deadline for his first assignment with confidence, knowing how easily he had always found it to construct a logical, coherent argument on paper. The aim of the assignment was to explore the concepts of communication and therapeutic relationship-building in relation to a patient he had cared for. In preparing to write the essay, Josh found not just the recommended reading in the library but also several journal articles, which covered different aspects of the subjects.

Approximately four weeks prior to submission, Josh’s academic advisor emailed Josh to suggest a tutorial to discuss the assignment. At this point, Josh had not written much so could not see the point in wasting her time. He responded accordingly and said that he would contact her when he had more writing down on paper. However, time moved on and Josh’s essay was flowing well so he decided to submit without contacting his academic adviser again.

When Josh received his feedback he was astonished and furious to see that he had failed. He thought there must have been some mistake as he had cited more than thirty sources of information and raised some issues that none of the other students in his cohort had even thought to include. However, when he read through the marker’s comments he understood that although he had undertaken a high quality theoretical exploration and identified his patient in the introduction, he had not attempted to relate the evidence to his patient’s care and had not reflected on his own personal learning at any point. Josh realised that his academic advisor would have advised him about these omissions and he kicked himself for not making use of her support.

Josh addressed the marker’s comments well, having sought advice from his academic advisor, and achieved 83% for his second attempt. However, because it was a second submission his mark was reduced to 40% and he had to pay a £70 resubmission fee, which he could ill-afford. He was determined not to make the same mistake again.

How does Josh’s experience compare to your own? What can you learn from his mistakes?