e-Learning in Clinical Education

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Other Key Staff

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Project Summary

It is very much an extension of a previous Scottish Government-funded project whose focus was medical education and training. The model used successfully to deliver student enhancements for medical education has been replicated for nurse education.

Main Objectives and Activities

1. Provision of high-quality digital resources for students
   1. Establish repository of existing digital resources developed at University of Edinburgh and make available via KCN intranet
   2. Facilitate the local creation of new digital resources through staff training workshops
   3. Purchase software licenses for commercially-available software as identified by KCN academic staff
2. Capacity building in digital resource creation
   1. Train-the trainers workshops held bi-annually at KCN facilitated by academic and learning technology staff from University of Edinburgh. KCN and MCHS staff attended these workshops
   2. Advanced training workshops for staff who will lead local development of resources beyond the project’s lifetime
   3. One-to-one training sessions for Academic Liaison Officers and academic/clinical staff from College of Medicine
3. Staff professional development
   1. Academic/clinical staff
      1.  Professional development workshops, facilitated by experienced UoE staff, held at KCN and CoM covering specific topics
      2. Visits to Edinburgh by KCN Academic Liaison Officers and IT staff
      3. Attendance by PG trainees at the Edinburgh Summer School in Clinical Education (2011).
   2. IT staff
      1. One-to one training sessions during workshop visits
      2. Visit to UoE of KCN IT Manager (2011)
      3. Skype-facilitated training as required
4. ICT enhancements at KCN and MCHS
   1. Collaborative build of new Curriculum Management System for KCN BSc Nursing students and pilot CMS for PG MSc in Midwifery
   2. Personal computers for students
   3. High-specification server for KCN
   4. New server for MCHS
5. Scholarships for PG Surgical trainees from CoM

Achievements specific to this Project

1. Provision of high-quality digital resources for students
   1. Repository now contains circa 1000 resources including: interactive CALs, virtual patients, videos of clinical procedures;
   2. Approximately 100 new digital resources have been created by KCN staff as a direct result of the training workshops
   3. Software licenses for 25 commercially-available software provided
   4. >270 resources in the repository have been linked to specific unique teaching events in the CMS
   5. a website containing >550 structured open-access digital resources to support medical and health-care training has been developed (Openmed: http://openmed.co.uk)
2. Capacity building in digital resource creation
   1. >80 staff from KCN and >25 staff from MCHS have participated in training workshops, some have attended up to 5 workshops. For KCN this is a significant % of the total staff (circa 90); for MCHS it represents about 30% of staff.
   2. Locally-organised training workshops and drop-in training sessions have added to this number
3. Staff professional development
   1. Workshops aimed at academic/clinical staff have been held at KCN and CoM covering curriculum development; assessment; writing good MCQ’s; making best use of e-learning; PBL; assessment of clinical skills
   2. Two CoM PG trainees attended the Edinburgh Summer School in Clinical Education (2011). The two trainees then led local staff development training sessions in Malawi.
4. ICT enhancements at KCN and MCHS
   1. A new Curriculum Management System (Moodle) for KCN BSc Nursing students was implemented in 2011. Use statistics show a significant increase (132%) in usage between October 2011 and Feb 2013 and usage peaks correspond to curricula activity e.g. starts of semester and exam periods. Average time spent per visit is 15 mins and usage is highest during the evening i.e. outside normal teaching hours
   2. 80 new personal computers for KCN students have been installed at KCN Lilongwe and Blantyre campuses in two refurbished computer labs now have extended opening hours. 20 refurbished UoE computers have been installed at MCHS
   3. A high-specification server was installed at Lilongwe KCN in December 2010 and this runs the CMS and resource repository. A new (lower specification) server was installed at MCHS in December 2010 and runs a structured file store giving staff and students access to learning resources
5. Six full-fee scholarships (£10,000) have been provided for PG Surgical trainees from CoM (combination of SGIDF, RCSEd and Johnson & Johnson funds). Students are enrolled on a PT (3y) MSc in Surgical Sciences offered by UoE and studied by distance learning. One student graduates in 2013 and others are at various stages of the programme