Reusable learning objects for nurse education: development, evaluation, challenges and recommendations

From the (skin) doctor's office to the lecture hall: An innovative, practice-oriented, media-supported teaching project with supra-regional interdisciplinary usage options

BACKGROUND

The transfer of practical knowledge and skills is the focus of modern medical teaching (master plan medical studies 2020). The aim of the teaching project is to provide medical students with important dermatological learning goals and contents by using innovative methods.

METHODS

As part of a teaching project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) at the Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, various new, partly media-supported teaching modules were developed in addition to curricular teaching and optimized by regular acceptance evaluations during the development process.

RESULTS

(1.) Professionally created instructional movies present essential techniques for diagnosis and therapy: standardized dermatological whole-body examination, wound smear sampling, performing of biopsies, curettages and excisions as well as skin suturing techniques on exercise material and on patients. (2.) Tutor-based courses offer students the ability to practice these techniques independently. (3.) Seminar lectures show different clinical pictures in university medicine and doctor's offices as well as the important interaction between clinic and doctor's practice in patient care. (4.) One-day internships in a teaching practice convey the activity in this setting. (5.) Seminars on psychodermatology provide insight into the stress caused by the skin disease using the "bio-psychosocial disease model". So far, 282 students have participated in the modules. In 88-100 % of the evaluations, there was a desire for further expansion of the new courses and integration into curricular teaching.

CONCLUSIONS

Our innovative teaching modules resulted in great acceptance by the students. The freely available instructional films were successfully used by other university locations due to networking in the Academic Teaching Forum. One perspective is the supra-regional and sustainable use of our teaching modules and the transfer of the concept to other departments and faculties.

No to distance education! Production of meaning of discourses of nursing representative entities

OBJECTIVES

to analyze the processes of production of meanings, based on the positions of Brazilian nursing representative entities, on distance education, considering the implications for nursing as a discipline, profession and work.

METHODS

this documentary research was carried out in sources from the Federal Nursing Council and Associação Brasileira de Enfermagem, from 2015 to 2018. Data were examined from discourse analysis, using paraphrase and polysemy as analytical devices.

RESULTS

they were organized based on the effects of meanings produced and affiliated to two analytical categories: "Forms of mobilization and operating entities" and "Basis and justifications for the positions". Final Considerations: the discourses signal concern about the future training of new professionals. Resistance, participation, visibility, broad and emphatic debate on the topic are shown as strategies for coping and defending a training process less captured by neoliberal logic, and more relational and committed to the quality of health care.

Reusable learning objects: a blended learning tool in teaching computer-aided design to engineering undergraduates

Purpose

Blended learning is an emerging trend across many educational settings, adopting the purposeful integration of traditional face-to-face and online teaching to establishing an engaging learning experience for the students. Blended learning provides an ideal platform for the implementation of reusable learning objects (RLOs) as a pedagogical tool to support classroom instruction.

Design/methodology/approach

This study had conducted a quasi-experiment followed by semi-structured interviews to determine if a blended learning approach using RLOs can enhance students’ learning in an undergraduate engineering computer-aided design (CAD) module. This study involved learners studying engineering in two different academic years.

Findings

Students from the first year were taught using traditional face-to-face teaching approach. The cohort of students from the subsequent year adopted a blended learning approach: face to face and access to a series of RLOs. The analysis revealed statistical evidence that the use of blended learning had a significant impact on the students' end of term exam grades in the CAD module in comparison to the students who undertook traditional face-to-face teaching approach. The qualitative findings highlighted the positive impact of RLOs on students’ learning behaviour, engagement and knowledge retention.

Originality/value

This study provided empirical evidence of the benefits of using RLOs as a blended learning tool in engineering domain. From a theoretical perspective, the findings highlighted the importance of good instructional design and sound theoretical underpinning of the pedagogical strategy. From a practical point of view, this study informed academics on how to improve learner's academic achievement using RLOs.