Innovation
The innovation is delivery of lecture content within a cancer / haemato-oncology programme, using live webinar facilities. This can be delivered to the student at different time points including evenings and can be listened to in the comfort of the student’s home or in the large computer facilities within the university.
What prompted innovation?
The team have been using this facility for distance learning since 2008 (which has been presented at two HEA healthcare conferences). Increasingly, there is a requirement for more provision of flexible learning for our nursing students who have childcare commitments or live a distance from the main university campus. This innovation is supported by a blended online course format, where instead of delivering lectures, tutorials were held to aid understanding of the course content. This is similar to the ethos of the ‘flipped classroom’ which is a new way of delivering courses within the national school system.
What makes innovation different?
Many courses will deliver online content in the format of videos. By using the live classroom (webinar) facility the students get a sense of engaging with their peers and have the ability to ask questions of the lecturer. This promotes a sense of belonging to a online community. Furthermore this innovation affords the interaction with expert speakers from around the globe which subsequently opens their horizons past their local community of nursing. Recording of all lectures was provided for those that could not attend or who wished to revisit the content.
Changes in practice
As stated above, the innovation has opened new opportunities to engage with lecturers and speakers from across the locally, nationally and internationally. Increasingly, lifelong learning is being delivered through webinar facilities and this allows the student to experience the technology and the potential for learning at a key stage in their clinical career.
Impact
- Evidence was gathered through module evaluation and reflective learning logs on the use of technology on the course.
- The outstanding message was that the students could playback! By playing back the lecturer they could read up on ‘concepts’ that they had not grasped. This facility was also useful if they had not attended the lecture.
- The students, overwhelmingly, stated that listening in this way to lectures allowed them to focus without distractions in comparison to sitting in a large lecture theatre.
- There was mixed reviews on the accessibility concerning childcare as the evening times did not always suit.
Dissemination
- We currently use this facility for the majority of our distance learning postgraduate courses and uptake is gaining momentum in distance learning undergraduate courses (Learning Disabilities). The intention is to build on this innovation within our cancer care education provision and disseminate our experience across the university at staff conferences.
- The intention is to complete a research study on the experience of the students using the synchronous facility to aid their learning.