Feeding back in assessment

What feedback models or processes do you prefer?

Nicol (2006) states that good formative feedback provides clear guidance to students about what constitutes good performance while helping students to develop self assessment and reflective practice skills. It involves dialogue between students and lecturers, motivates learning and promotes self-esteem.

While formative feedback is important to guide student learning summative assessment give student the key to what counts for the course (Boud, 2000). Summative assessment suggests that there is an end point in the learning process where the student will have met learning outcomes is then assessed and pronounced competent or otherwise. It does not consider the nature of learning as a life long process which students need to engage with. While summative feedback may suggest ways in which the student can improve performance there is little opportunity for the student to do this unless there is a resit or resubmission opportunity. In my experience these opportunities are usually only given to failing students. Summative feedback therefore may have little influence on continued learning.

Why is feedback important?

Feedback helps students to close the gap between their current and desired performance and provides lecturers with information which can help to structure ongoing teaching. Feedback is of particular importance in formative assessment where the goal is to support student learning by identifying knowledge gaps and creating learning opportunities to bridge those gaps. It is important the feedback is closely related to the learning outcomes for the course and matches those outcomes with the students’ current performance. It is also important that students have an opportunity to consider and reflect on feedback and strategise how to meet their own learning needs.

What are the challenges or issues with assessment feedback?

If the goal of formative feedback is to assist student learning and identify how any further learning needs can be met, how do we know that the feedback we are giving students is effective in this way? It may be relatively easy to respond to areas of weakness for a whole class but how do we do that on an individual level? Do some types of assessment support this type of feedback loop more than others? It is important that feedback is given in a timely fashion and this can be a challenge if there are large numbers of assessments to consider.

How do you balance how much feedback to give?

I find sometimes that I spend a great deal of time giving feedback to students which is probably never really considered in any depth, this may be because much of the feedback I am giving is on summative assessments. It would probably be better to develop the art of skilful inquiry, asking the students to identify themselves where there learning needs are and how they well they feel they have achieved the outcomes. Students then need to have an opportunity to prove that they have met their learning needs and identify further goals. This process is a process well suited to a learning contract process of assessment.

References

Boud, D. (2000). Sustainable assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning society. Studies in Continuing Education, 22, (2), 151-167

Nicol, D. J., McFarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in higher education. 31, (2), 199-219. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 15th September 2009 from http://www.reap.ac.uk/public/Papers/DN_SHE_Final.pdf

Assessment of midwifery practice skills in a distance based blended learning course

Introduction / Background

The learning contract, which is the focus of this post, is an assessment in the first year practice skills course in our undergraduate midwifery degree programme.  Although this three year degree has been running for around 16 years this is the first year on the new model of course delivery. I have described this course in detail in previous blog posts. The new undergraduate degree programme is very similar in content to the previous programme however the process of delivery has changed dramatically this year. In this post I discuss the learning contract and explain why we are using this as an assessment in this course I also explain how this assessment is presented to the students and how it is marked.

What assessment in being used in the practice skills course?

One of the main assessment tools that is being used in this course is  a learning contract. The students are required to identify a learning need around a midwifery practice skill. They have to identify the knowledge they already have about this and what it is that they need to learn. Students then explain how they will go about meeting these learning needs, what resources they will access and how they will improve their knowledge and/or experience with the skill. Students thenrecord what they have learned and what, if anything they still need to do to feel confident in their knowledge of the skill.  Finally the student prepares a reflective piece about their experience of undertaking this project. This assessment gives the student 50% of the  mark in the practice skills course.

Why is this assessment being used in this course?

This assessment forms part of the students Midwifery Practice Portfolio. The Portfolio is a structured document outlining all the practice experiences a student has during the three year degree programme. Students also reflect on their learning and experiences within the portfolio.  They maintain a record of the skills practiced and competence achieved with these skills.  The portfolio also provides a mechanism for reflection on midwifery practice and professional relationships with women and colleagues.  Portfolios have been identified as a useful tool to assess learning and competence amongst health professionals and are commonly used in nursing (Joyce, 2005; McMullan, Endacott et al, 2003; Scholes, Webb et al, 2004). The professional portfolio has been identified as a useful tool to develop critical thinking, promote adult learning and is geared to the individual needs of the learner (ibid). Portfolios are a required component of the recertification programme for midwives in New Zealand (http://www.midwiferycouncil.org.nz/main/Recertification/)

As a component of the portfolio, learning contracts also fit within the pedagogical framework of adult learning. Anderson and Boud (1996) suggest that learning contracts are useful assessment tools for flexible learning courses. Learning contracts support and encourage student autonomy and responsibility with regards to learning. Anderson and Boud recommend that  learning contracts should be used across the course and should not be a single isolated assessment tool within a course. Within the learning contract students  identify when, what, how and why they will learn a particular skill, they perform a self assessment of their own learning and provide evidence to corroborate this, they also identify their future learning goals.  This prepares the student well for the reality of midwifery practice where lifelong learning is essential (Boud, 2000). It will give the student a model to follow as they progress from undergraduate midwifery education to midwifery practice. It is an important aspect of practice, for students and midwives, to identify learning needs and how these learning needs can be met.

How this assessment is is being implemented

Students have been encouraged to use the learning contract process to identify their learning goals, learning activities and learning achievements within the portfolio and are being asked to identify one skill which they will submit for assessment and marking within the practice skills course. They have been given a table, within the portfolio, as a guide to help identify the process they need to follow to do this.  Students have been asked to keep their topic focused on the skills which they are learning  in the first year of the programme and will record their learning experience and reflections on this experience. The learning outcomes for the practice skills course are

1. demonstrate an ability to use communication skills to develop effective professional relationships with their peers and colleagues.
2. utilise an awareness of effective communication to enhance the quality of the childbearing experience for women and their families.
3. safely perform a range of selected practice skills and be able to outline their underlying theories and rationale.
4. accurately perform drug calculations and demonstrate skill of medication administration.

This assignment is designed to meet outcomes 1, 2, and 3.

In the course outline students have been asked to identify a situation in practice where a midwifery assessment has been carried out and write a reflective account of this experience. Students then develop a learning contract relating to this subject area. The student reviews her existing knowledge around the subject area and identifies her learning goals. She then reviews how these goals will be met and verify that they have achieved these goals. Students have also been given guidance within the portfolio to demonstrate how they can prepare and present this learning contract.

As the assignment date approaches students have been asking questions about this assignment. While I believe this is a good assignment technique in this course I am not sure that we have clearly articulated how this relates to the learning outcomes. I think this assessment will develop, change and grow for subsequent years.  I am interested to see how the students work with this assignment.

Is this assessment appropriate?

As described above there is a rationale for this assessment. Student are only now engaging with the process for submission of their learning contract. This may be because I am only getting my head around it too at the moment. I welcome your thoughts on this. If you are an educator of undergraduate health students do you think this would be a good way for your students to learn or be assessed? Are their any suggestions you have where this process could be better? I welcome any feedback on this. Please leave your comments in the comments tab below this post. Many thanks for coming to my blog and reading this post.

Conclusion

This post has outlined the learning contract which the most significant piece of assessment in the practice skills course in the first year of the undergraduate midwifery programme at Otago Polytechnic. Learning contract has been identified as a useful assessment tool for flexible learning, supports adult learners and gives the student skills which support lifelong learning. This is further described within the learning outcomes of the course, information in the course outline and within the portfolio document.

References

Anderson, G. & Boud, D. (1996). Introducing learning contracts: a flexible way to learn. Innovations in Education and Training International, 33, (4). 221-227.

Boud, D. (2000). Sustainable assessment: rethinking assessment for the learning society. Studies in Continuing Education, 22, (2). 151-167.

Joyce, P. (2005). A framework for portfolio development in postgraduate nursing practice. Journal of clinical nursing. 14, (4). 456-463

McMullan, M.,  Endacott, R.,  Gray, M. A.,  Jasper, M.,  Miller, C.,  Scholes, J.,  Webb, C. (2003). Portfolios and assessment of competence: a review of the literature. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 41, (3). 283-294

Scholes, J.  Webb, C.  Gray, M.  Endacott, R.  Miller, C. Jasper, M. McMullan, M. (2004). Making portfolios work in practice. Journal of advanced Nursing. 46, (6). 595-603

Assessment in the new midwifery programme

I have started the final course in the GCTLT at Otago Polytechnic. Here I am starting to reflect on the assessment process.

Image:  X class examinations from Bindass Madhavi’s phtos n flickr.com

In midwifery it seems  to me that much of what students learn is assessment driven, this is common amongst health professional education (Wass, Vlueten, Shatzer & Jones, 2001). The reality of student learning is that students feel pressured from their workload and gear their learning to meet the criteria of course assessments. Wass et al, stress the importance of ensuring that assessment of students is aligned with the competencies expected of them in clinical practice. They suggest there is no one way to assess clinical competence for medical student, the assessment process will comprise a variety of assessment styles which provide the students with a variety of ways to demonstrate their understanding. Factual written tests can demonstrate what the student’s background knowledge, written tests with a clinical focus can demonstrate that the student knows how to approach clinical issues, OSCE (objective structured clinical examination) allows the student to show the skills that they have developed and performance assessment (through practice supervision, video of skills in clinical practice or reflective logs can demonstrate that the student can act appropriately in the practice setting.  Osce’s have been found to be a useful tool for supporting learning and identifying competence in the nursing professions (Mason,  Fletcher, McCormick, Perrin &Rigby, 2005; ) however, although they have been found to be beneficial they need to be part of a broad picture of assessment of students competence (Rushforth, 2007).

In the school of midwifery we are always trying to look critically at what we assess and how many assessments we require students to do. In the new curriculum much of the online material is accompanied by formative assessments, quizzes and such like, which are not marked but will guide the students through key points of the learning resources they are accessing. A few students complete these and value this process however the majority seem to ignore them and only concentrate on assessments that are marked or are at least looked at and acknowledged by the teaching staff. This suggests to me that we need to consider carefully what we assess, how we do it and how this will support students learning.

References

Mason, S.,  Fletcher, A., McCormick, S., Perrin J. &Rigby, A. (2005). Developing assessment of emergency nurse practitioner competence – a pilot study. Journal of advanced nursing. 50 (4), 425-432

Rushforth, H. E. (2007). Objective structured clinical examination (OSCE): Review of literature and implications for nursing education. Nurse Education Today. 27 (5), 481-490.

Wass, V. Van der Vlueten, C. Shatzer, J.  & Jones, R. (2001). Assessment of clinical competence. The Lancet, 357,  945-948

Me being interviewed by Sarah Stewart

Last evening I spoke with my buddy and colleague Sarah Stewart about the development work I have been doing and my ideas around flexibility in courses. Sarah recorded this interview and has posted it on her own blog linked here. Sarah has loaded this interview onto Slideshare.  At the time I thought I may not have come across very clearly however when I listened to this I realised that it does articulate a lot of my ideas around flexible course delivery and how we have gone about this so have decided to put this inteview on here as well. So here you are.

By the way we do not usually wear hats like that (just in case you thought otherwise). It was an afternoon tea party, at the Savoy in Dunedin,   where we had the opportunity to pick a hat out of a box. I loved them, mine looked just like something my Aunty Nettie would have worn when I was a wee girl.

Back in class for the undergraduate midwifery students in our new blended learning programme

I have been blogging about the development and progress of our new programme for undergraduate midwifery education.

This photo graph and article appeared in the Otago Daily Times during our first intensive in January.

Our new programme has a longer academic year than our previous programme, beginning earlier in the  year and finishing later. Instead of being divided into two semesters our new programme is divided into three trimesters. Each trimester begins with the students coming together in class for two weeks of sharing, learning, doing class presentations (which are part of the assessment processs) and having some face to face lectures.  It is really good to see everyone back together. We all know each other quite a bit better and there is an air of cammeraderie and friendship.

How is it going?

We decided to get some feedback from the students about how the programme is going for them. What is working well and what they feel needs to change.

Yesterday the students got into groups and discussed this then fed back to the class. This is what I took out of this discussion.

It was overwhelmingly postive. The students said they are enjoying the course and the online learning. There were only one or two who said they felt they would prefer to be in class and have lectures, most are more than happy with being able to engage with the learning resources when they want to and in the way that suits them.

Online resources:

Feedback on the online learning resources was very positive. Most like this way of learnign and enjoy the quizzes and activities.  They have aparticular topic that they cover each week and are given a list of questions related to that topic to investigate and discuss in the Elluminate session later in the week. The students wanted the questions to be posted at the same time as the modules.

Online quizzes

The learning resources are interspersed with quizzes and case studies to make the students think and to improve the learning experience. Most of the students enjoy these althous some acknowledge that they feel now compulsion to do them and so do not bother.  They felt it might help if the Quiz had to be completed before progressing on with the module and this is something I am going to look into. They particularly liked doing the crosswords but some of the quizzes were less useful. In particular they mentioned a memory game that I had set up so I will not bother with that one again. I have had trouble getting crowwords to work for me so I will have to find out how I can do this from those that are managing to get crosswords up. I was told Hot potatoes was a good programme for this and I have tried but have not managed to master it yet. I have done some lovely crosswords in Eclipse but i cannot get them to load properly so that the students can use them. These activites are formative assessments which are recognised as an integral part of online learning and so it is important that we find ways to help the students engage with these to improve their learning and the retention of the material they are covering.

Elluminate,

We use Elluminate for weekly class tutorials which the whole class can attend online. Again most really appreciate this and find these tutorials useful the questions that have been put to them in the online learning for the week are discussed here. A couple of students said they would prefer video conference . There was also some discussion about the possibility of having a class session for those in Southland and Dunedin who can attend while doing the same think on Elluminate for those who cannot attend or prefer to be online. This would be very tricky I think as there is alot for the lecturer to consider in facilitating an Elluminate session, text chat, voice chat and running the material on the white board screen. I think trying to manage this online and face to face at the same time would be too difficult and we do not have the manpower to run session twice.

Some students are very willing to discuss issues in Elluminate, some prefer just to text. some said they would be happy to speak face to face but do not feel so confident online. They wanted to point out that if they do not speak it does not mean that they are not engaging or learning. Some just like to sit and listen and learn. This is very similar to the classroom situation and it seems to be the same people who are happy to talk in class that are the ones who are happy to speak online. The lack of body language cues was discussed as a disadvantage.

Practice skills

The students are really enjoying the midwifery practice experiences they are getting. They are aware that thsi is much more than the previous students had and they really appreciate this. I had hoped that some of the skills assessment would be able to be done in an actual clinical setting with the midwives in practice but this is proving very difficult to achieve. The midwives feel a bit threatened and overwhelmed by these skills assessment forms and this is not happening so we will have to go back to doing this in the class room setting.

Small group tutorials

The students really like the small group tutorials and most feel that these are working really well for them, helping with the course work and learning and providing an opportunity to debrief and learn together.

Reflection

Overall it seems that the programme is working well for the students. I would like to try to do something to help them engage more with the formative assessments we have in place and will look into the idea of making these compulsory to complete before moving on. At least for some of the quizzes. I think the change to doing some of the skills assessment in the weekly face to face session will be positive. I have been reluctant to do this previously as it would be outside the topics time tabled for the week and was worried that this may confuse the students but I think they can all see the rationale and I think this will work. It is very pleasing that this feedback was so postiive. We also gave the students a questionnaire to complete and that is being analysed. It will be interesting to see if these results are any different to this feedback.

Start of the new Bachelor of Midwifery programme

It has been an incredibly busy couple of months since I returned from a brief summer break to finish preparations on the midwifery practice skills course for the start of our new programme. There were some last minute adjustments to make and I completed work on the documentation section of the communication module. All of the other learning resources required for the start of the programme were ready but required proof  reading and correction. A couple of resources, not required until later in the year, will be developed as time allows. I will not discuss here the other teaching and administrative duties that are part of my workload however it is worth noting that they exist and required some of my time initially. I have had to put all of these to one side as the start of the new programme neared.

2nd February 2009.

Start of the new combined Bachelor of Midwifery programme with OP and CPIT.

We welcomed our new class on the 2nd of February, much earlier than any of the other programmes begin and well before our other students returned. This is because our new programme has an extended academic year, allowing increased practice hours for the students. This increase in practice hours is a new requirment from our Midwifery Council and is part of the reason for changing our programme of study. Orientation week began with a welcome to otago Polytechnic  lead by Kaitohutohu Dr Khyla Russell. The rest of the day was an introduction to the institution and the programme. When I had a chance I mentioned the facebook group I had established to keep the students connected to each other and was happily surprised by how many were existing facebook users. The requests for membership of the group came thick and fast after that.  The next day we went off to Whare Flat scout camp and spent the next couple of days there. Staff from the sport institute came along and did a great job in with some team activities. We also ran a couple of workshops on communication. In the evening we did some belly dancing, very novice but fun, we all got involved. We have a staff member and one of our new students who are instructors in this art. We also went for a hike, needless to say I was the tail end Charlie, but I made it. We all seemed to find these two days very worthwhile for getting to know each other.  On Thursday students had another day full of polytechnic information, I had to cover things such as fire safety, harassment and bullying prevention etc. This was the end of the week as it was the Waitangi weekend holiday.

I had the students all day on Monday and introduced the concept of professional portfolios then went on to introduce the practice skills course. We then started the skills with standard precautions, infection control and handwashing. Tuesday we were introducing the students to recording vital signs, one of my colleagues gave a brief lecture to outline key aspects before they got down to looking at equipment and doing this skill. All the learning resources around these topics are online for the student and we have linked to excellent freely available resources such as:

• The CDC hand hygiene interactive training resource
• The Nottingham University hand hygiene training resource
• The British Hypertensive society

Unfortunately I came down with a horrid bug on Tuesday and was forced to come home where I have been moaning a groaning ever since. Today I am feeling almost Ok so thought I might use a little of my time to record this.

I am aware of the huge amount of work I still have to do in organising the midwifery practice placements and finding women willing to have students involved and share their experience of childbirth. If you happen to be a pregnant woman in Otago or Southland and are willing to have a student please drop me a line to cardacs@gmail.com. There is still the small amount of development work to do and we may need to fine tune some of our existing resources in response to student feedback if this is necessary. Of course all the other things I have had to put to one side are urgently calling for attention.

My reflections on the start of the programme.

It is a shame I was not around for the whole week. My sense was that the students have gelled quite well and that is has been a positive start.  The Scout camp was fun but was also a good team building opportunity. I was dubious about conducting the communication workshops there but it actually did work quite well.

It is a  hassle that we have to organise MRSA screening and Mantoux for the students, just another little job amongst so many. It would be much easier if the students came with this already competed.

We have the portfolio, which is an over-arching programme document positioned in the first year practice skills course. I think this is a mistake as it makes this course appear overly complex where in fact it is simpler with fewer assessment components than we had in the old programme. There are components of the practice skills which fit within the portfolio and there are components of other courses that fit here too. I believe it needs a separate  but linked place in the overall programme interface. We need to come together as a team to decide how to do this and how to present it to the students in the future.

I am not sure about having these two weeks combined. I believe it would be better to have one week for orientation, giving the students access to the learning resources. I would  then give them a week away to get to grips with the material followed by another week to come together, brain storm how they are finding the online resources, what questions they have and provide any support they need. The students would also be prepared for the practical skills and we would not need to cover so much additional material with them. I may have a go at drawing up an alternative orientation time table for consideration by the midwifery school team.

The facebook group seems to be working well, nearly all the students are members and they are communicating with each other through this group. I have seen a suggestion in facebook that they also connect through Skype, so I am pleased that this network is becoming established.  Hopefully it will prove supportive for the students. There is another resource being established as a joint project between OP and CPIT called ‘The Midwfery Junction’ which is intended to connect midwives on a wider plane.

Overall I think it has been positive. I remain a little apprehensive about the students experience and would love to hear what they think. So if any of you are reading this please drop me a comment here and let me know, or write something in facebook about how this has all been for you. My particular interest is in the practice skills course but of course this is only part of the whole for the students and their experience will be coloured by the other courses also.

We finally seem to have our Moodle site looking good! It has taken a long time to achieve.

Signing off

Well now I have done this I have to go a tidy up my house a bit if I can find the energy.

Using web based quiz in a LMS

As readers of the blog will be aware I am developing course material for a new undergraduate midwifery course using the Moodle learning management system I have been using Exe as a development tool. It is a great programme and really easy to use but it does have some limitations. In particular I have found that the quizzes are cumbersome and slow to create, it is a long a protracted process and I find the results less that satisfactory, particularly for  formative assessments, which  I think should be fun as well as educative.

I have started using free online tools to create these formative assessments. Exe has the ability to link these in as websites so that they open seamlessly directly into  the moodle interface. My favourite is Interactive Games. This plays online and so can be linked directly into the moodle interface without having to follow hyperlinks. I really like to look of some of the resources in Classtools but ahve not yet managed to use any in my course work. I have also used Mystudio and it produces very nice looking multichoice quizzes, however I cannot embed them into Exe on Moodle and so have to hyperlink to them.

One of the many advantages of using web based quizzes is the ability to change the quiz, make alterations, add new material, without actually having to take down the whole Exe file, change and reload. The link to the file remains the same only the content has changed.

Does anyone know of any other webbased resources for creating an  online quiz?

PLEs and Eportfolios online meeting

I got an email form my friend Sarah Stewart telling me about an  upcoming online event to do with personal learning environments (PLEs)  and eportfolios. I am posting this here as I want to attend this and I am hoping not to forget, so here is the link to the Elluminate session.

Here is a link to a world clock with the time  of the meeting if you are interested in attending.

Round up of developing a midwifery practice skills course for flexible delivery.

Image: Pohutakawa, the NZ Christmas tree. from Andy Eakin’s photos on Flickr.com

As the year comes to a close Lorna and I have been making great progress towards the midwifery practice skills course we are developing in a blended delivery format. I have not been blogging much because I have been so busy working on this but I now need to record what I have  been up to for the last few weeks. So to bring you up to speed on what this is all about here is a brief outline of the programme.

Background

We have been developing a midwifery program to be delivered in a blended format over the last couple of years. We start at the beginning of 2009. Students will be located in groups or cohorts in various rural towns as well as the main centers. Otago Polytechnic are developing this in collaboration with Christchurch polytechnic.  The process we have developed is as follows

We are using the moodle LMS for the online course delivery. All content is being developed in modular format using EXE as a development tool. We are using a mix of written material, links to online content and free online resources. We are also using  powerpoints with voice over, converted into shockwave flash files with ispring and either embedded or hyperlinked to exe files. Students are given a plan for progress through these modules although they can also work at their own pace if they wish. It is expected that they will progress through this material ready to attend the face to face components ready to discuss and debate the theory they are learning and to gain experience with the practical skills they will need for midwifery practice.There are formative assessments, such as quizzes and interactive games, to support learning in the online resources. Each section has clear learning outcomes to help students understand what they are expected to learn from the resources.

Students will meet in their local groups once a week with a local midwife/educator who will facilitate their discussion, direct them to learning support services if they are having difficulty with the learning and provide teaching and guidance with selected midwifery practice skills. The facilitator will also encourage the students to share and support each other through their learning experience and will coordinate placements in the various clinical or midwifery practice areas, liaising with midwives and other health care providers.

In addition the entire class will come together at four two week blocks in the year. At the start of the year they will be introduced to each other, the courses, the technology and  support services they can access. Some face to face teaching and team building and group activities will be scheduled. Later their will be more face to face teaching and at the final two week block examinations and summative assessments will take place. In addition to this teaching and learning students will  have midwifery practice placements in a variety of settings.

Progressing to this point

As we approach the start of this new programme. I am feeling very positive about it. We have been working very hard to structure our course in a logical way which should clearly link theory and practice and progress the students through from the basics to to more complex practice skills, while keeping these firmly linked to the context of midwifery practice.

As I have recorded in previous posts we separated the skills into modules which made sense in terms of midwifery practice. These are, antenatal, labour and birth, postnatal mother and child and therpeutics. More recently we realised we needed another module for the core component which overrides all of these others, that is communication. In this fifth module we will have material on communication skills and also include material on documentation, which is another form of communication. We were going to put material about the components from this course which will fit into the student developing portfolio, either paper based or electronic. However at the moment we feel that we will keep this alongside the course information, which is where the students will enter the course.

I have been working on the EXE files, which are on my hard drive, developign the course content. I then felt I needed a better overview of how the students would actually move through the course material. Which aspects would be taught face to face in the intensives. Which would be taught face to face in the tutorial groups and which would be principally online learning. I sat down and worked out where all these components would fit within the year of the course. At this point we hit a small block as we were not all thinking along the same lines here. My boss, head of the school of midwifery and head of the health group at Otago Polytechnic, Sally Pairman, obviously liked the way I had shaped this up and developed this further alongside all of the other courses the first year students will be involved in.

Earlier this week I flew up to Christchurch and had a meeting with Lorna. This was very positive. Lorna and I share very similar ideas about how the course will work and so we have very few problems in working alongside each other. It was lovely to spend some time with her and her family, she gave me a bed for the night.  We have negotiated with the math department from CPIT to run the examination of Math for our students and to take a couple of tutorial sessions with them as well. This is fantastic and will definitely be a bonus for us.

So now the road ahead is very clear, there is still some development needing to be done with the online resources but I am feeling confident and positive about the programme.

What have been the highs a lows of the development process.

Highs

I have been very lucky to be working alongside Lorna in CPIT. It has been great that we agree so well on so much. Lorna identified EXE which has been a godsend for course development and also ispring which has been great for converting power point to shockwave flash files.

I am sooo…  glad I participated in the Facilitating online learning communities course with Leigh Blackall and Bronwyn Hegarty and also the Design for Flexible Learning also with Leigh and Bronwyn. I would not be nearly so able to engage with this process without the learning I did in these courses.

Finding all the great stuff that is out there on the internet, free for anyone to use has been just amazing. The generosity of those who have developed these resources is amazing. I wish we were able to reciprocate, perhaps in time??

Lows

The main point of difference is with our institutions and the way that they perceive students should engage with learning. OP has an open policy where we as lecturers own the material we develop, we can take it with us when we go as long as we acknowledge OP if we use it. We can make it freely available on the internet if we wish to. CPIT on the other hand have a closed policy, all of their resources belong to CPIT and cannot be shared in an open environment. None the less I have loaded some of the content I have developed onto wikieducator and slide share etc, and I hope to do more development of this as time permits.

The time frame has been tight, the pressure has been quite enormous, and the workload allocation for development in no way related to the reality of the job. It has also been a struggle to do this and keep our existing students ontrack. I have to say our first year students this year have been a group of wonderful women and have been enthusiastic is supporting us as we have worked to develop the new course materials. Some of this new work has also filtered through to them to their benefit also I think.

A times I have felt quite alone and isolated. It is hard to get the IT support needed as we are experts in midwifery and so we really have to develop things ourselves. I do think the IT support has been less than it could have been at times however.

Conclusion

So now I am on leave for abpout 3 weeks. I am going to have a total rest from this and back into it on January 5th.

Merry Christmas ( or happy celebration of whatever you celebrate at this time of year). Happy holidays to all.

Pedagogical strategies for distance learning

I came across this article ” Pedagogical strategies for building community in graduate level distance education courses” By Eileen McElrath and Kate McDowell, assistant professors in library information services. McElrath and McDowell describe the importance of community to learning and present Brown’s 15 step process to community building in online classrooms.  These steps are, from 1 to 15, tools, comfort level, self assessment and judgments, similarities, needs met, time allotted, supportive interaction, substantive validation, acquaintances/friends, earning trust and respect, engagement, community conferment, widen circle, long term/personal communication, camaraderie. These steps occur in three stages, making friends online, community conferment or acceptance and camaraderie.  They suggest that these processes are facilitated when modeled by instructors and go on to describe strategies which can support this community involvement and shared learning.  Supporting the students in developing a sense of community helps to prevent student isolation. It helps to keep the students motivated and interested in the course. It creates a sense of belonging, that members of the group matter to one another, which has been identified as important for academic success.  The strategies suggested not only help the students to relate to one another, and gain a sense of community, but they also help the students identify the relevance of the course content to their own personal experiences as well as the experiences of their classmates.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains the processes required to reach a state of self actualisation. The basis for this is a sense of safety and security.  This is also important for online learning or distance learning. Supportive interaction is an important part of establishing an online community. Students need to learn how to learn online, they need guidance and support to do this. As they are coming to terms with this new way of learning they need reassurance and ‘reminders to be kind to themselves’ during the course. The distress that can be associated with technology failures, which are bound to occur from time to time, can be alleviated by acknowledging this possibility early in the course and having a back up plan for when these issues occur, both for the facilitator and for the students. In a course that I was involved in, Facilitating online learning communities, several of us had established a network on skype, when we had trouble with the elluminate programme, through which we were connecting as a class, we were able to instantly talk to one another and share what information we had about what was happening. Students also started to use the discussion forum in a synchronus way and established another means of communication through this mechanism. This certainly reduced our anxiety and annoyance with the process and helped me realise the importance of back up communication, whether that is another online source or a cell phone network, anything that facilitates communication when things are not going as they should.

McElrath and McDowell suggest creating a course chat section where students can readily ask any questions in an open format, as they would in a face to face class, allowing other students to share in the discussion and offer their suggestions as well as receiving feedback from the lecturer. They go on to suggest some activities where students can share their own experiences in terms of the course content which can relate to the course outcomes and form a basis from which the students can not only share stories but learn the realities associated with the theoretical components of the course. The entire article is well worth a read for anyone involved in distance or online education.

So how to do I see this applying to the work I am doing at present, establishing a midwifery practice course with a blended learning format. Students will be enrolled in this course, which is part of the entire undergraduate programme being developed in a blended format. Students will not just be based around the confines of Polytech but will be in  groups, some in Dunedin, some in Invercargill and perhaps also in the Central or north Otago areas. The entire class will come together four times a year for a couple of weeks each time and the groups will meet face to face for half a day a week for tutorial support and some learning. The rest of the course content will be online, most of the theoretical components will be learned at a distance. Although the students have regular small groups with whom they can interact on  a regular basis I believe it is important that they also share a sense of identity with the larger class group.

In face to face teaching we often start the session by asking who has experienced this? And start the group discussion from there,  moving on to the theory behind the topic. For example with blood pressures I will ask if anyone has had their blood pressure taken. Has anyone found this to be a painful experience, have they had unanswered questions when their blood pressure has been taken. We then use this as a basis to learn the important aspects of taking blood pressure. I think we could do this online through a discussion forum. We could  use the responses to establish a basis for learning about estimating and recording blood pressure. This is a constructivist approach to learning and the authors of this article suggest that we should be open about this. Students should understand about constructivism and how this applies to their own learning needs. Most midwifery practice skills would be suited to this approach.

I could write more but it is late and I am tired so may return to this another time.

E Learning for midwives

In my roll as a midwife in a rural facility I have been enrolled in a course which is completely online. This is the first practical midwifery course I will have done in this way. It is about breast feeding and human lactation and is an international course for lactation cunsultants. I have bogged more about this in my midwifery blog. I am interested in this not only for the course content which will be useful for my midwifery practice, I hope, but also to see how the course is constructed. It has been deveoped using the moodle platform.

Carrying on with constructing course

I have been very busy creating content for the new midwifery practice skills course that I am co-developing with Lorna Davies. We had developed a clear structure for the content grouping it into modular components to make sense of it and give context to the material but I have been feeling increasingly anxious about how the students will actually interact with the modules and work through the course material. We know what parts we want to deliver face to face in the larger class groups, what content we want to deliver face to face in the smaller tutorial groups and what content we feel can be learned online. Clearly there needs to be a structure to when these various components will be taught.

In the old model we did all skills teaching face to face and students have had access to lecture notes and power point presentations through the blackboard learning management system. In the new course the only face to face teaching that will be done will be actual hands on instruction of the skills. Students will be expected to learn the theory components prior to attending the face to face sessions. Various learning resources are being used. Our online moodle modules are composed of learning units breaking down into individual skills, explanations of why these skills are required for midwifery practice, what context they may be used in and any basic bioscience that is required, to be able to understand the important safety aspects of the skill. The learning units link to youtube videos, interactive learning resources and other freely available online learning resources as well as presentations we have developed ourselves. We are using power point presentations with voice over converted into flash for compression. In this way we can make the most of the face to face sessions for the important hands on components that cannot be learned online. It will be very important that the we have a clear plan of how and when these topics will be covered.

Some students will prefer to follow their own plan for learning the course material and that is fine. However they will need to come to the face to face components having covered the required material. Other students will want a more formal guide about how to work through the course material.

To satisfy these needs I have been working on a framework for the course and a learning guide for students . both of these are still in a draft form. You can see the framework here . Although the formatting did not come through 100% correctly into google docs. The learning guide needs some more work doing and I will post later.

I feel a little happier now that I have this structure for the course which I felt I was lacking previously. I feel now that all we need to do is get the content complete and feel certain that this can now be done within the time frame. Particulalry as we do not need to rush with the resources required for the end of the year.

Getting started on my E-Portfolio

I am well behind my colleague Sarah Stewart in terms of online presence and developing and e-portfolio but I have made a start with this on the Wetpaint wiki site.Wetpaint have agreed to provide an advert free site for educational sites. You have to apply for this and I have been granted this status for my site.

Your thoughts comments and suggestions are very welcome.

E-Portfolios

Background

I have been pondering E Portfolios and what these might be. I feel that I need to really think about this, to be clear in my own mind, and perhaps to help others to understand  how these might be developed with students in our undergraduate midwifery programme. We continuously highlight the importance of life long learning with our students. Undergraduate midwifery education needs to provide midwives with the knowledge and skills of  basic midwifery competencies but, more importantly perhaps, midwives need to be aware of the importance of best practice based on reliable evidence. Keeping pace with  the speed of change requires life long learning and reflection on practice. When midwives follow routine or accepted traditional practice they may be unaware of changes in evidence. Women deserve the best care from competent and knowledgeable midwives. This can only be achieved through reflection and continual questioning of practice decisions (Taylor, 2006).

Portfolios

Midwives in New Zealand are required to maintain a  professional portfolio as evidence that they are competent and reflective practitioners. Items which may be included in a portfolio are

• Record of employment, education and personal and professional development
• A performance based analysis of previous and current practice
• A competence based analysis of previous and current knowledge, skills and experience
• Learning based on knowledge acquisition and skill development
• Future goals and career development based on consideration and analysis of the previous two points
• Individual reflective processes

(Andre & Heartfield, 2007)

It is important that midwifery students develop skills in maintaining a professional portfolio from the beginning of their midwifery career, at the commencement of midwifery education. A portfolio can be kept in any form that meets the needs of the profession  and the midwife who owns it. The portfolio will be an important part of the professional identity of the midwife and will reflect her personal needs as well as those of her professional body. She will able to present aspects of her portfolio as evidence of competency and will include personal reflections on her goals and attainments.

Students in our undergraduate degree programme are required to submit assignments in electronic form. It is sensible therefore that we should encourage and support students to begin to develop their portfolio in an electronic format. I met with one of my current students recently and was reviewing her reflective log which is part of our current course requirement. She had struggled with this and found it difficult as the written work is not her preferred way to to reflect. She is much more comfortable speaking about aspects of practice or her learning. One of the advantages of an electronic portfolio would be that  students could reflect in writing or with audio or video recording, through art, music poetry or any other medium they desire. This is something we should consider if we are requiring students to submit components of their e portfolio for  assignments and as evidence of reflection.

E- Portfolios

My friend and colleague, Sarah Stewart has developed an e portfolio using a variety of online resource. She has a blog with blogger in  which she reflects on midwifery, education and web 2.0. She also has a wiki where she provides evidence of her achievement and links her blog posts to highlight her thinking on issues. This is an excellent example of using freely available online resources to create an e portfolio. Sarah has also used video uploaded onto youtube and powerpoint presentations uploaded onto slideshare. All of these are useful resources for reflection. It is also possible to load documents into google docs which can then be linked into an eportfolio. I have my Masters thesis loaded into google docs. Some of these are open for all to see (for example youtube videos) and some can either be open for all to see, of can be hidden and only available to those who are invited to view them, for example the wiki or google docs. I have also commenced a portfolio in Wetpaint, at this point it is very early in development and I have not made it open for all to view. In time I intend to make aspects of my portfolio freely available.

According to JISC Uk ‘An e-portfolio is a purposeful aggregation of digital items – ideas, evidence, reflections, feedback etc., which ‘presents’ a selected audience with evidence of a person’s learning and/or ability.’

Sutherland, S. and Powell, A. (2007), CETIS SIG mailing list discussions³ 9 July 2007. Rae Tolley, in a comment on Raewyn’s blog states ‘It is obvious that an institutional portfolio cannot be hosted within that institution for ever. For several reasons it is therefore obvious that the e-Portfolio should be hosted externally, which, apart from anything else, avoids problems of portability and degradation.’ In his website Rae states ‘It is noticeable that those schools which are coping with the latest initiatives such as VLEs, E-Portfolios or PLEs are invariably the schools that have learnt the lesson of ‘whole-school adoption’ and have been working together as a team, often for many years’.

While creating an eportfolio midwives and midwifery students can gain skills in using information technology for reflection, research, communication, information sharing and networking as well as producing a resource to demonstrate their competence and continuing skill development. These will be valuable skills for continuing development and professional development throughout a lifespan. The reflective processes involved with eportfolios will help midwives identify personal learning goals and strategise how to achieve these.

Proprietary resources have been developed to assist with preparing and presenting eportfolios, such as Mahara. Mahara has to be accessed though an institution, similar to the Moodle resource. Individuals can register but the full functionality is not available until it is accessed through and institutional website. If midwives commence a portfolio using Mahara they will either have to rely on the institution to continue to provide them with access to their eportfolio, or they will need to start again once their formal education is complete. Neither of these options seem optimal.

E portfolios can also be created on an individuals computer in their hard drive. Over time as the portfolio grows it may become difficult to organise and store all the variety of artifacts. It is also more difficult to share items of the portfolio with prospective employers or to demonstrate competence. If it is kept in an internal hard drive there is also no opportunity for sharing with others or developing community learning opportunities.

Midwifery practice and eportfolios

My masters thesis identified the desire of rural midwives to establish connections with other rural midwives, to share information and learning opportunities. Midwives would have this opportunity by sharing aspects of their eportfolio with others. Midwives can invite others in a particular group to view and contribute to aspects of their portfolio or could have some of their achievements available freely on the world wide web. Confidentiality issues associated with midwifery practice means that some aspects of the midwives eportfolio will always need to be a private reflection for the midwife alone.

E portfolios and midwifery students

In conclusion, having considered the different options for eportfolios I believe that students should be supported and guided to create their eportfolio with freely available learning resources such as wikis and blogs. I think we need to make a decision as an institution which of these we wish to support for our students and encourage staff to gain experience in their use so that they can provide the necessary support and guidance to students.

References

Andre, K., Heartfield, M. (2007), Professional portfolios. Evidence of comptency for nurses and midwives. Sydney: Churchill Livingstone.

Taylor, B. (2006). Reflective practice: A guide for nurses and midwives (2nd ed). Glasgow: Open University Press.

Evaluating course development resources

At the end of the DFLP course Bronwyn raised the question of evaluation, and invited us to consider why evaluation is important in education. She discussed the role of evaluation during all stages analysis, design, development and implementation of a course ( the Addie model)

As I have been developing the learning units I have been working on I have been loading them onto the CPIT and OP Moodle LMS for other lecturers to view and have invited them to comment. I have not initiated a formal process for these comments however and I have not had a great deal of feedback from this. I am wondering if I should seek answers to specific questions about these resources from other lecturers. I also wanted to get feedback from students and discussed this with the larger group at one of our regular meetings through Elluminate. Although there was general approval for this idea I did not want to give students access to all the work we are developing in its raw stages. On discussion with Terry Marler, who is supporting us with the IT side of development of this programme, we decided to create a special course where students could be enrolled and material could be loaded specifically for this purpose.

I asked the current first year students if they would be interested in reviewing some material. Several said thy would but to this point only two have actively pursued this. Here is the feedback from these students. I asked them to consider how long it would take to complete this resource, how easy it was to navigate, how easy it was to understand, did it flow well etc.

Student one

“I went through the unit this morning. It was very thorough and well thought out. I liked the videos, its nice to not have to read everything and get the change in learning style. Under the heading “how does infection spread” when you click on it, it only goes to the page with the objectives for a split second and then takes you elsewhere to a page that has the heading at the top corner: “up to date for patients”. I think it may just be a problem with the link where it goes there automatically so you can’t read the introduction page. I thought that things were worded very clearly, and that the quiz at the end explained the answers if you pressed the wrong answer.
I have to admit I was skeptical about how the whole online learning thing would work, but this is incredibly easy to follow and very thorough. This may actually be better than what we’re doing because people can go at their own pace and go over the material and refer back to it all at their fingertips. Even though blackboard does this for us, I think that this moodle is a lot easier to follow and you have done a great job with covering all your bases in this topic without having to download a powerpoint presentation. I wouldn’t mind seeing another one just to compare the two, but this one I found was really good.”

Student two

“I have been to have a look at the moodle course. I worked through it over the weekend, although it didn’t take very long maybe 3 hours.
The things I liked were the combination of media and sources giving a variety of ways to access the information. The little videos and quiz things were particularly good. I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of information. Each topic flowed to the next and was not to difficult to process and understand.
The things I didn’t like. It took a moment to figure out the flow of the pages, when I got to the bottom I expected to be able to click next and move onto the next section. I don’t know if it will be available when the full course is up and running. But if I knew nothing about this topic I would have liked to be able ask questions of the topic tutor, maybe something like a feedback page?? I would have liked to have known which text book (and pages) to refer to If I wanted.
Overall it was rather good and would be happy to do this type of module in future.”

This has given me some useful feedback on the material reviewed from a students perspective. I have some ideas of things that I can change to improve the learning unit. I believe this has been a useful exercise and I would like to try to get more feedback if I can.

Bringing together some key points in blended, distance and online education

Hazel Owen

I found these videos from Hazel Owen for the DEANZ conference 2008. This is her Bio from you tube. “Hazel Owen is an Academic Advisor (Education Technology Consultant) at Unitec, NZ. She has been involved with implementing ICT enhanced learning for nine years and provides training for faculty, as well as developing blended and online courses. Her research interests include communities of practice/ICT enhanced learning and teaching (ICTELT) underpinned by Sociocultural principles”.

Although the programme she is discussing is far removed from midwifery education none the less aspects of the course are applicable and share common features with our programme.

Facilitating learning communites

Hazel discusses the previous students’ educational experience as being teacher led, content specific and didactic in nature. This may also be the case for our students. The need for student to be supported to move to a learner centered system is described and the tools which facilitate this are demonstrated briefly. In particular is the need for students to develop learning communities which will not only support their current learning but will also prepare them for life long learning. We have discussed this in our programme development but I believe it is integral to the success of the programme and needs to be considered each step of the way. for example in the midwifery practice course we have been working on the preparation of content. We have not yet completed this but we do need to consider how the students will use this content. How will they communicate with each other and share their learning. We have decided to have weekly face to face tutorial groups meetings with the practice facilitator and this will meet this need in part. There needs to be a clear understanding that these tutorial sessions and not for the delivery of content but are to facilitate open discussion and shared learning. We also need to facilitate opportunities for students to connect with each other and we need to make some decisions about how we will encourage them to do this.

Developing a glossary of midwifery terms

Some of the resources that Hazel describes in these videos have been included in our midwifery practice course. For example she discuses the students developing a translation dictionary and, in the CPIT Moodle LMS, Lorna and I have started a Glossary of midwifery words and terminologies which we hope the students will add to and create for their own use. I am a little concerned that perhaps we have been adding too much content already to this, which may make the students feel that they do not own it and discourage them form contributiing.  However it is a useful tool.

E-Portfolios

Hazel also discusses the development of an e-portfolio as one of the assessment requirements. The requirements for these students to be computer literate for their future work is very clear and may not be seen as a high priority for midwifery students, none the less there are some good ideas which could overlap into our courses. I believe the importance of online communication is a universal requirement. It will be as important for midwives in the future to be able to access information and communicate with each other through online resources as it will for any other professional group. Providing this learning opportunity for out midwifery students is therefore of particular importance to their future learning and professional development. The importance of clear guidelines and instructions and making sure that the links between what is being learned and the applicability to future practice needs to be apparent in everything the students are doing.

I am embedding only the first and third videos which have more generalisability. The second video concentrates on the specific programme for the arabic male students to a greater extent.

I found these videos interesting and they have helped me to consider once again some of the key points which I believe are fundamental to the success of our programme.

Lets keep talking! Distance students need to too.

Ring of Brodgar in Orkney

This post is taken from a comment I left on Sarah Stewart’s blog posting “How spontaneous and serendipitous can we be online”

I have been spending a great deal of time working at home on the new curiculum development. This is good use of my time, avoids a great deal of travel, and allows me to just get on with it. I do feel increasing isolated in this environment. I love that Sarah and I are connected through Skype and I am often able to spontaneously ask a question on text or have a voice chat online. I have also had the opportunity occasionally to ask other colleagues for help and advice in this way. I wish more of us were on Skype, or Gtalk. I too think these are important tools for students if they are going to be sitting at computers at home working on their course material. The really incongruous thing is the absolute importance in midwifery of the relationship between the woman and midwife and the importance of communication to this relationship. I value the ability to work at home but I have a much greater appreciation of the importance of communication and the need to provide students with opportunities to talk to each other. I agree with Pauline (infomidwife) that the range of IT communication resources can be overwhelming and risks students losing interest and not engaging because of this. I agree with free choice but wonder if we, who have a little knowledge of these resources, need to be somewhat directive. This would mean expecting students to use Skype or Gtalk and making sure that they all have contacts with each other through these resources.

I also really want students to blog about their learning experiences and would love to establish a blogging network. As a lecturer however I can see that this could significantly add to my work load. Keeping track of blog postings, considering how to respond and then making appropriate responses. Sarah has developed a really nice easy blogging style, I still struggle and postings seem to be taking me longer and longer to author as I struggle to get the language right. Making sure that students do not breach the confidentiality of women with whom they are working and are not making inappropriate comments about individual midwives practices is another concern and potentially time consuming as a lecturer. It is this aspect, workload, that makes me reluctant to pursue this too vigorously. I would love to know how lecturers who do have blogging networks with students find this. How does it fit into your general workload?

Image from shadowgate photos on flickr.com

Beginning to construct a course which supports flexible learning

While completing courses myself around flexible learning and course construction I am also working on the development and construction of the midwifery practice skills course. There are several features of this course which could be described as ‘flexible learning’. Students will be able to enrol from a  variety of locations and study predominantly from those locations supported by a local facilitator. They will also be able to come together as a larger class for some face to face  learning. Learning resources will be delivered face to face during the class ‘intensives’ and during tutorials with their local facilitator, students will also have midwifery practice time, working alongside midwives. Learning resources will also be available on-line for the students to access. They will be able to pace themselves through these learning resources and move backwards a forwards through them as they wish, however there will be  structure around the course and students will e expected to have completed the learning resources at each stage so that they can discuss and gain practical hands on skills in the face to face intensives and tutorials. Some features of this course delivery will be (following categories from; Gluc, 2006)

Individualised learning – As part of  this course students will be developing a portfolio which will include a learning contract. This will allow them to idenrify their own learning needs and to track their own learning and progress towards their individualised learning goals.

Peronalised learning support – Students will  have support from their local facilitator and the course co-ordinator and will be able to meet and discuss with them both within the class or local groups and on an individual basis as required. This contact and discussion can take place face to face or online through Elluminate meetings, discussion forums, personal emails, cell phone text messaging or telephone or cell phone chats.

Collaborative learning – Students will meet together as a whole class and will be supported to develop connections and networks with each other through a variety of online resources such as skype, weblogs cell phone text and chat groups. They will also have a local group which will be 2 or more students in a particular location and will be encouraged to support each other through the learning journey. Some course work may be required to be completed in group activities which will involve them working with other students from different locations and networking with them  online or by cell phone.

Virtual learning environments- We will not be using virtual worlds initially but we are continuing to explore the possibilities for using a virtual environment for scenario based learning. Each aspect of the learning resources will be accompanied by formative assessments scattered throughout and some of these will include case studies, where the students are invited to consider situations, decisions and actions that they might make.

Flexible study- All aspects of the course will have a thorough online component, which will allow the students to study at their own pace in their own time and wherever they have internet access.

The first step in course construction

After considering our learners and different learning styles that need to be incorporated. We established our collaboration teams to work on course development. I have been working alongside a Christchurch colleague Lorna Davies .  We started by brainstorming  with everyone from the two schools what the content  would be. We then had to consider how this content might be divided up into the three trimesters (This course will be delivered in three trimesters rather than two semesters) of the year.  It seemed important that the skills the students would be learning should have some context around them rather than task specific skills. to do this it made sense to develop modules focused around antenatal, labour and birth and postnatal care. These are all in the context of normal uncomplicated birth at this stage of the students learning journey. Some basic skills that need to be covered do not easily fit within these aspects and so a fourth module was decided on which would focus on therapeutic interventions that may be required, either in the community or hospital setting. We then divided these modules Lorna is developing the antenatal and postnatal modules and I am developing the labour birth and therapeutic skills modules. Lorna and I decided very early in the process that we needed to have good communication between us and established weekly meetings on Elluminate where we can discuss progress and brainstorm issues as they arise.

Using EXE as a development platform and moodle for course delivery

Lorna was able to attend a conference where she learned about EXE for developing course content which can then be loaded onto moodle. We decided to give this a go and found it very easy to use, none the less getting to grips with these two new technologies has been a learning curve which is ongoing.

Developing the modules

It became evident that these modules would need to be broken down further into learning units otherwise they would be too large. This has largely been up to our own discretion but we discuss and share ideas in our weekly meetings. I decided that I would like to evaluate the material that I am developing with current students. I would also like to get some feedback from midwives in practice eventually. To this end we have established a separate development portal on our Moodle to allow current students access to modular components that have been developed. I will develop an evaluation tool to get some feedback from these students about the resources.

References

Gluc, E. (2006). Using Blended Learning to Accommodate Different Learning Styles. University of Hertfordshire. Online retrieved 17th October 2008 from: http://escalate.ac.uk/downloads/2917.pdf

Image: Red sky construction from poagao’s photos on flickr.com

Connecting students with course content, lecturers and each other.

I was just exploring the Unitec concept map mentioned in a previous post. I was looking at this section of the map on cell phones.

Unitec source smartphones and provide a 1GB/month mobile broadband account to all staff and students. Students pay for their own voice and txt messaging and the 1GB plan is paid by Unitec. These phones are used to deliver course content as well as communication devices. Students have also been issued with a wireless keyboard to facilitate data entry. This at a cost of $700 NZ.

I wonder a little about the screen size however I can see this could be something that might be really useful for us as well. Any thoughts about this?

Image: 3 Cell phone calls, from Wonderlane photos on Flickr.com

Week 16 DFLP

Well I have finally come to the end of this course. I have presented my draft flexible learning plan and completed my final learning plan. I have also considered how my postings have met the assessment requirments of this course and have created a table from the DFLP wiki site, included how I have met these criteria, self assessed and saved this as a google document which can be downloaded from here

I now have to summarise my postings and plan as to how I have met the following course objectives

1. Discuss principles and processes of flexible teaching and learning to facilitate culture sensitive adult learning;                                                                                                                                                           I have considered the particular issues of adult learning in several postings particularly here where I discuss learning theories related to adult learning. And in this post where I discussed the benefits of blended learning particularly in relation to adult learning. These postings discuss the aspects of adult learning where adults come to new learning situation with a variety or previous experiences which will influence their current learning. These experiences form a platform on which further learning will build. Sometimes previous assumptions will be challenged and new ways of considering the world will be necessary, none the less all knowledge is built on previous experience connected with the current learning. Previous experience is strongly influenced by who we are and where we come from and I explored cultural issues related to blended learning here.
2. Critique the design and application of existing flexible teaching and learning options in relation to the literature;                  During this course I have continually been  exploring aspects of flexible delivery. I consider that flexible learning is not something new, in fact human beings learn best in a flexible way and always have done. I have looked at learning theories and how the apply to learning in flexible model.
3. Explore and justify the strategies for the development of flexible learning environments;                              I have considered all the various ways in which flexibility can be achieved and also what support structures may need to be considered for learners at a distance
4. Analyse and evaluate challenges that arise in the design of flexible learning environments;         There are many challenges  when considering my flexible learning plan. In particular are the issues of accessibility, sustainability. There are also issues around open access consideration of earners preferred learning styles and many more. I have tried to address these in my pla.

I have learned a great deal form this course. Thanks to my fellow participants and to the staff who guided us through this learning journey.