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Description
Significance and relevance This presentation will share our experience of collaborating across institutions and disciplines to produce a specialist blended learning activity. It will chart the development of the project from planning through delivery to evaluation, identifying those hurdles we anticipated and cleared with ease, and those which surprised or challenged us. We have collected evaluative evidence at a reasonable sample size (n155) from the students across the participating institutions. Analysing this alongside the team’s reflections on the process, we have knowledge to share about the creation of similar, inter-professional learning activities. The Presentation Two neighbouring universities collaborated on the development of an inter-professional learning opportunity; the subject and focus was the complex matter of providing high quality palliative care for people at the end of their lives. Pedagogical theory and practice was at the forefront of the group’s planning. Practitioners and academics from the disciplines of medicine, social work and nursing worked together, adapting a case study (Mrs King) to ensure that it would support applicable learning outcomes identified in their uni-professional curricula – some of these learning outcomes were specific to end of life care, others explicitly identified inter-professional working. The early identification of these learning objectives ensured that priorities were clear from the outset and value was placed on the development of a learning activity that would be applicable to each group of students. What resulted was a blended learning activity in which students were guided through activities, drawing on a video casebook, example artefacts and the input of their multi-professional group. This enabled development of their own knowledge and peer learning, as well as the opportunity to cross check their responses against those of experts in the three fields represented. We evaluated the student experience using specially adapted pre-session and post-session questionnaires, designed to ensure relevance to all student groups. This resulted in a high response rate of 89.7% a good amount of quantitative data and some helpful qualitative comments. The Learning Inter-professional education: Students valued the opportunity to learn as a multi-professional group. Logistical issues associated with learning opportunities between various programmes (Bluteau and Jackson, 2007) could not be wholly overcome, yet developing this specific range of materials has ensured that the learning opportunity can be reliably replicated for groups of students, independent of the professional mix of students or group facilitators. The Blended approach to case based learning: The case based, applied method preferred by students (Srinivasan, 2007) was well facilitated by the blended method. The use of a virtual case, supported supplementary paper information and facilitated group discussion gave students the sense that this activity, although contrived for the classroom, was more authentic that other case based learning opportunities. References Bluteau, P. and Jackson, A. (2009) Interprofessional Education: Making it Happen Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Srinivasan, M. et al. (2007) “Comparing problem-based learning with case-based learning: effects of a major curricular shift at two institutions.” Academic Medicine 82.1: 74-82.
Authors
| Name | Stef Lunn |
| Affiliation | University of Warwick |
| Country | United Kingdom |
