A team of Edinburgh academic and technical staff, David Dewhurst, Ross Ward, and Brendan Owers, recently visited Blantyre to work with College of Medicine and Kamuzu College of Nursing over a 2 week period from 20th October. They were joined on this occasion by David Davies, a physiologist with extensive e-learning and medical education experience from the University of Warwick, and Leszeck Wojnowski, a clinical pharmacologist from the University of Mainz. The visit encompassed numerous meetings with counterparts from COM and KCN, training workshops and evaluation activities.
The newly built COMPASS VLE platform was launched in September 2014 for the BSc Clinical Officer degree programmes and the visit provided an opportunity to meet with and gather feedback from students and lecturers, and to ensure that the course information, educational tools, and learning resources were in place and accessible.
Training workshops covered the use of COMPASS, different e-learning approaches such as the use of discussion fora and quizzes. We also held induction sessions for the new intake of BSc students to raise awareness of the advantages COMPASS could provide for them.
The Edinburgh team met with academics from all of the degree courses we are supporting (BSc, MMed and MSc) and these meetings provided great opportunities for exchange of ideas, identify resources and plan staff development activities. We also met with staff who would work closely with us in developing and implementing online e-assessment and e-feedback systems which will be part of the next phase of the project. The Project steering group met to discuss progress against targets and identify and prioritise tasks over the next few months.
Staff from KCN Lilongwe and Blantyre campuses attended a 3-day workshop aimed at building upon their existing knowledge of KCN’s PG Connect VLE system and to enhance the modules that they are developing for a number of MSc programmes due to launch early in 2015. Work on this phase of the Project is well advanced – all of the modules have module descriptors and outlines accompanied by supporting resources, and in some cases discussion boards and quizzes.
Major outcomes from the visit include:
- Greater engagement from academic, clinical and technical staff at CoM and KCN. Most staff have now received training in optimizing the use of their respective VLE systems, and how to use e-learning approached more effectively to support the teaching and learning in their modules.
- All modules in the CoM’s BSc Clinical Officer degrees and KCN’s MSc degree programmes that we are supporting have working VLE systems that have been populated with course information and some initial teaching and learning resources. New resources in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and basic sciences (pharmacology) have been identified as a direct result of this visit.
- Meetings with teaching staff from the various specialties has identified existing educational resources that can be incorporated into the VLEs and where new resources and approaches can be used.
- Edinburgh staff have engaged with BSc and MMed students to increase their awareness of the COMPASS system and train them in its use. This has already increased the amount of student activity on the site.
- Planning for the development of the online e-assessment and e-feedback (quality assurance) systems, that are part of the next phase of the Project, has been initiated
- An implementation plan for the mobile devices pilot study due to have a phased launch over the next few months has been agreed. Mobile devices (tablet computers) are now available in Blantyre and we have arranged 3G data bundles to provide internet access while students are on clinical attachments outside the main urban areas.