The University of Newcastle is using e-portfolios for formative and summative assessment, as well as annual appraisal in their Medical Program. They were introduced for both practical reasons (the fact that students are not physically on campus for three years of their program, paper logs are complex and cumbersome to carry around to various clinical settings) and pedagogical reasons (providing a framework for recording and evidencing programme outcomes and student derived objectives, keeping track of meetings and actions, and reflecting on and sharing information).
The e-portfolios are now used for:
Professional development planning
Recording meetings with personal tutors
Cinical logbooks
CV
Significantly, the successful implementaion of e-portfolios has taken ten years. The e-portfolio is now embedded in the Medical Curricula at Newcastle University. The e-portfolio was developed in-house and care was taken to ensure that it was easy to use and very flexible making it adaptable for many different uses within the medical program. It was constantly fine-tuned to ensure that it met the needs of students and faculty and the criteria for effective assessment.
After the first year of use students were surveyed and focus groups were conducted. Student feedback suggests that the use of e-portfolios was a useful learning experience and encouraged them to relflect on their placements. More than half the students said it would influence their learning in the subsequent year.
The developers of the e-portofolios at Newcastle emphasize the importance of ensuring that the use of the technology is based on sound pedagogical and learning requirements and that there is a "high level of stakeholder buy-in and ownership." They also talk about the importance of having a "clarity of purpose" which I think is one of the keys to succesful implementation of technological advances. It is easy to get caught up in innovations that have potential benefits for some learners but that do not match our particular learners' needs. In this case learner needs were the driving force behind the introduction of the technology giving it the best chance of being successful.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Branching pathway virtual patient scenarios - University of Edinburgh
I took a look at this case study as we are considering creating virtual patient cases for our nursing and social work programs using similar software.
The University of Edinbugh use Labyrinth (software) for groups of students (in year five) in their department of veterinary medicine to create branching case scenarios. Students create these scenarios over one week of a three week elective. They create them collaboratively and then present them to faculty who work through them several times taking different paths each time and providing feedback to students.
Although there has been little formal evaluation of this activity and there was initially some concern about the technical skills necessary for completing the activity, student feedback has been positive.
Students expressed the feeling that "the activity of establishing scenarios featuring characters with a variety of decision points and possible variations of direction to be taken through scenarios presented them with something close to what they imagine professional practice might be like."
I am intrigued by the idea of getting students to create the scenarios themselves. I think in our context working with mature students in the distance education nursing program who might not be technically very strong it might be a good idea to introduce the scenarios as activities to work through before asking them to create their own. I am very interested by the Edinburgh students comments that the creation of the scenarios can approximate real life decision making experiences. This is something we find very difficult to create in the distance education experience with no opportunities for role playing.
I must explore this further.
If you want to read more about this case study go to
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/edinburgh/index_html1
The University of Edinbugh use Labyrinth (software) for groups of students (in year five) in their department of veterinary medicine to create branching case scenarios. Students create these scenarios over one week of a three week elective. They create them collaboratively and then present them to faculty who work through them several times taking different paths each time and providing feedback to students.
Although there has been little formal evaluation of this activity and there was initially some concern about the technical skills necessary for completing the activity, student feedback has been positive.
Students expressed the feeling that "the activity of establishing scenarios featuring characters with a variety of decision points and possible variations of direction to be taken through scenarios presented them with something close to what they imagine professional practice might be like."
I am intrigued by the idea of getting students to create the scenarios themselves. I think in our context working with mature students in the distance education nursing program who might not be technically very strong it might be a good idea to introduce the scenarios as activities to work through before asking them to create their own. I am very interested by the Edinburgh students comments that the creation of the scenarios can approximate real life decision making experiences. This is something we find very difficult to create in the distance education experience with no opportunities for role playing.
I must explore this further.
If you want to read more about this case study go to
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/case-studies/tangible/edinburgh/index_html1
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Well...my frustration level with this task is sky high...having created a new blog as the course blog is not working I have just composed and lost a posting about the case studies.
I will attempt to rewrite but may have lost a lot of my enthusiasm.....
I chose case studies connected with the medical field as at my home institution we run an online nursing degree program. The program was developed a few years ago and I am aware that there are many new technologies (web 2.0) that might enhance the program by improving interactivity, providing more collaborative and reflective evaluation, and adding more challenging case scenarios.
Consequently I chose two case studies using e-portfolios, one on online assessment, and one about using Labyrinth - an authoring tool for creating virtual patient case scenarios. I am hoping to learn more about these tools and how they might be useful in my own context. On first reading the amount of investment required in time and resources suggests that I should be looking at implementing only one of these tools at a time!
I will attempt to rewrite but may have lost a lot of my enthusiasm.....
I chose case studies connected with the medical field as at my home institution we run an online nursing degree program. The program was developed a few years ago and I am aware that there are many new technologies (web 2.0) that might enhance the program by improving interactivity, providing more collaborative and reflective evaluation, and adding more challenging case scenarios.
Consequently I chose two case studies using e-portfolios, one on online assessment, and one about using Labyrinth - an authoring tool for creating virtual patient case scenarios. I am hoping to learn more about these tools and how they might be useful in my own context. On first reading the amount of investment required in time and resources suggests that I should be looking at implementing only one of these tools at a time!
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