ALPS has won an award! Read more about the Handheld Learning Award achieved on 6th October 2009.

Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) is a collaborative programme between five Higher Education Institutions with a proven track record for excellence in learning and teaching in health and social care. Along with Huddersfield this includes the University of Bradford, the University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University and York St John University. Further information about the programme can be found at the central website. The aim of ALPS is to ensure that students graduating from courses in health and social care are fully equipped to perform confidently and competently at the start of their professional careers and so improve patient care.

Each university contributes to the collective development of the programme though active involvement in the overall operational plan and through site based projects that contribute to this. Of the 16 health and social care professions involved with the programme Huddersfield has seven:

• Midwifery
• Physiotherapy
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Podiatry
• Nursing (all four branches)
• Social Work

We contribute to ALPS through active engagement in all aspects of the programme. Janet Hargreaves is the site lead, and we report locally through the Site Implementation Group which has representation from all seven professions within the University, plus all Practice Learning Facilitators within the area. See Huddersfield's representation on all the ALPS Groups.

Two important areas of ALPS are promoting the active involvement of Service Users and Carers in learning and assessment in practice, and facilitating learning from and between different professions. To this end we have appointed two seconded project leaders, Christine Rhodes and Ian Warwick respectively. In addition, each profession has nominated an advisor, who contributes to the development of the work. Summaries of all of the people involved with ALPS at Huddersfield are included in the ‘people’ section.

In order to achieve its objectives ALPS is currently engaged in a number of related activities:

• The 16 professions have agreed that three areas of assessment – around communication, team working and ethics – are common across all groups and work mapping these competencies is due to be completed by the end of 2007
• Communication with students in practice settings and the management and recording of assessment tasks are recognised to be areas for development. Across the sites a number of different mobile technologies (e.g. smart phones, ipaq) have been piloted in order to test the feasibility and usefulness of these in practice. In Huddersfield we have been testing the use of a smart phone. Across the whole programme a procurement plan has lead to the further purchase of devices and the development of platforms and infrastructure necessary to support IT enabled forms of communication with students in practice settings
• Currently 900 T Mobile devices are being deployed across the region to cohorts of students to develop, test and evaluate the implementation phase of ALPS; more information

An important part of development is to consult with service users and carers, students and staff about the validity of the competencies and the assessment tools we are developing. As a part of this in March 2007 Huddersfield conducted a consultation drawing on the expertise within the School and in the various clinics and service user/carer organisations with which we are involved. See Common Learning: can different disciplines speak the same language?