Hi all,

Thanks to those that attended the EKM Journal Club this past Thursday! For those of you unable to attend, here is a synopsis of the discussion.

Blended and flexible learning are innovative teaching techniques talked about widely at UBC this year. The topic has been covered in journal clubs, workshops and the EKM education forum. Also, the School of Nursing has recently appointed Marc Legacy with the role of Teaching and Flexible Learning Associate to support faculty. He is developing a section of this blog site, so come back soon and see what is coming up.

In our Journal Club this month we looked at Jokinen and Mikkonen’s work titled “Teachers’ experiences of teaching in a blended learning environment”. The piece is available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471595313000723.

This paper reported instructors experiences in introducing a blended learning undergraduate nursing program, using focus groups to explore teachers perceptions.

Blended Learning

Blended learning is often a combination of in-person and online learning, though various other strategies can be integrated as well. Blended learning can be any alternative to didactic-style teaching. Some notes from our meeting:

• Faculty admit there is the tendency to think blended learning involves simply asking students to work online or read independently.
• Blended learning is often self-directed but it does not necessarily have to be independent work.
• Students still need guidance and support.
• Providing a range of clearly defined activities is useful however students can spread themselves too thin if too many options are provided
• Students can take on the role of the teacher and teachers can learn from student’s experiences as well. This can create a rich and satisfying learning environment.
• Students are very resourceful online and can use online resources very effectively.

Flexible Learning

Flexible learning is any way of teaching and learning that meets the needs of the learner and the requirements of the discipline while still benefitting from the expertise of the instructor. Flexibility can be logistical such as the location, time, pacing and credentialing or pedagogical such as the method of course delivery. Additional notes from our discussion:

• Workload for students can actually increase as students are often asked to keep up to date with online class discussions and often these discussions are lengthy.
• Workload for instructors can also increase. Classrooms are an efficient way to deliver a lot of information to a large number of students at the same time and answer questions in real time. Without this system, instructors may be asked to respond to students.
• As nursing is a profession that requires adept interpersonal skills, meeting face to face has increased importance. Interacting with a professor or with peers online, even if a video function is employed, is not as beneficial to teach skills like communication and active listening.

Autonomy

Does providing more autonomy to students improve learning?

• In our meeting, we held a poll on this question with mixed results. Some faculty members felt that autonomy in the classroom and clinical experience allows students to delve deeply into their individualized interests. Other faculty members felt that autonomy has the power to improve student learning but the responsibility is up to the students. Autonomy does not necessarily lead to improved student outcomes.
• As the UBC program changes rotations every six weeks, by the time expectations are set, the course ends before much autonomy is given.
• Some students prefer autonomy and excel when they are given choice and independence. Other students like additional direction. Perhaps the most flexible of teaching styles would be able to accommodate both of these learning styles.
• A comparison was made between autonomy of learning and current changes in hospital workload structure. Currently, some health authorities are changing to a workload model whereby nurses take on greater number of patients and work directly with Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs). Nurses are responsible for care coordination, hand out medications and complete physical assessments while LPNs assist with many of the activities of daily living.  With this structure in mind, students need to know how to work autonomously. A faculty member suggested that some students think they want to work only in a hospital setting because it is seemingly more structured. With the new role of RNs being mainly care coordination, this may not be true for much longer. In that case, greater autonomy with learning at the School of Nursing is necessary to provide students with the skills needed to work autonomously in the hospitals.

Paper Key Findings

• Jokinen and Mikkonen found that collaborative planning is key to the success of blended learning. Working collaboratively with colleagues to plan courses led to expertise development and learning and teaching enhancement.
• The authors also noted that the size of class is important for online learning. Forty-five students are considered a large classroom for online learning. We are lucky to have groups of about twenty students for most of our curriculum.
• Instructors had to be intentional with the precious face-to-face time and give students thorough instructions for independent online learning time.
• Instructors found online learning to be a challenge for themselves and were disappointed in students’ ability to glean important material from the provided online resources.
• The authors found that different pedagogic skills and approaches are required compared to traditional face-to-face learning. Instructors needed to learn these new approaches and it took students a while to become comfortable with them.

Paper Analysis

The paper was a useful piece of work. However, details of the researchers’ approach and method of analysis was a little limited and poorly described. Furthermore, we were concerned that the focus group size was rather small leading to a higher risk of bias, and insufficient members to promote an in-depth discussion. The group size in this paper was 4 participants for  two groups. Our group considered that focus groups should ideally have about 6-12 participants.

For future studies, we would be interested in understanding students’ perception of blended learning too.  It would be interesting to compare this with instructors’ experience. Lastly, we were still left wondering what the impact of the clinical aspect of the program studied awas as this was not really reported in the study.

Future of Blended Learning at SoN

Marc Legacy is available to support faculty members in using flexible learning techniques in courses and the evaluation of these techniques. Marc is available in room 280 at the UBC School of Nursing.

Also, please join us for our next workshop on February 27 in room T182 at 12pm.

Due to popular demand in this workshop we will be presenting “Tools and Approaches to Support Flexible Learning.” In this session we will explore a range of practical and creative strategies faculty might wish to adopt to support flexible learning practices within their courses. Marc Legacy will be attending this workshop to support with our ongoing exploration of this exciting topic!