Output measures:
Later refined and confirmed to collect data from only 3rd year nursing and paramedicine students on their wider digital and online experience in our courses; the knowledge, skills and attitudes in accessing and navigating the online aspects of our online course learning rooms, content and digital tools required to successfully engage and participate. Including what support they require in order to learn effectively. With the overall aim to inform further digital and online developments and priorities within IHAP – creating an information source, rather than just what I anticipate, to support the production of the digital learning strategy; using the responses as a mandate to stimulate continuous improvements across our institute and for decision making, another aspect of being an effective digital leader. The online questionnaire was designed with open, closed and rating scale questions. Prospective respondents were invited to share their experiences and perspectives in relation to the digital and online learning-related questions. The questionnaire includes questions on their VLE module and course learning rooms, PebblePad and workbooks, Virtual Reality (VR) immersive learning and digital literacies.
Data collection occurred from 14th December 2022 to 31st January 2023. Responses were collected from 3rd year nursing and paramedicine BSc courses. Out of an approximate 115 students (80 nursing, 35 paramedicine), 78 responses were received. 63 from BSc Nursing including fields: adult nursing; mental health; learning disabilities. 15 from BSc Paramedic Science.
The following summarises the general outcomes, that aim to have an impact on the student learning experience through appropriate changes in their use of our learning technologies and access to meaningful online learning material.
The full report can be found at the bottom, 24 pages.
- PebblePad
- Workbooks need to be more user-friendly and intuitive for students
- Student PebblePad guidance needs to be clearer, visual and consistent
- PebblePad student and external induction training needs to be standardised across courses
- Significant workbook changes need to be made to be communicated to students
- NOW learning room content
- Creating online asynchronous interactive activities and resources, to enable further variety and opportunities for students to learn in the online elements of their course
- Developing high-quality online instruction for online activities and resources
- Lecturers need support, protected time and safe environments to develop their knowledge and skills in digital pedagogy
- Develop a NOW learning room quality process
- VR and immersive learning
- VR and immersive learning needs to have a clear purpose and alignment to our curriculum areas, and to develop effective immersive learning experiences
- Digital literacy
- Digital literacies need promoting and embedding across our curriculum
- Other comments and suggestions related to IHAP digital curriculum
- NOW course and module learning rooms need consistency
Today 5th July, in our monthly department meeting I presented the visual summary below, where I briefly walked through the outcomes. The full report will be published later this month. I ended the presentation by asking the following questions, which created some discussion on the topic and ways we can build on this in the coming academic year, providing a baseline for future evaluations: Is there anything that surprises you in the results? What challenges do you foresee in taking action towards making such improvements? What specific support will be helpful to you in creating asynchronous online activities and resources?
Anne Felton Head of Department, introduction to presentation- "It's helpful for people to have in mind when they're listening to it, that it happens to quite unintentionally coincide with a school audit of NOW learning rooms. And every department in the school has been found wanting, shall we say, in terms of NOW learning rooms. And I won't focus too much on it now, ironically. But next, academic year we will be looking at how we can support people and what we need to do around standardising NOW learning rooms. So just something to bear in mind that, you know, this kind of data helps us feed into that that work which will be coming later on in the timeline."
Jo Rutt Principal Lecturer in Nursing, post-presentation - "Thank you Dan, for that and I think it's really important for us to know the fundamental things of remembering that when we copy over not everything would automatically work. And because it's easy to kind of think I know I've got that, I'll get that across. So it's a really good reminder of making sure to check on links and update the elements that we need to. So thanks for all of that information."
Anne Felton, post-presentation - "I think it's really useful to have that data from our students as well isn't it as the NOW audit gives us it from an institutional point of view and expectations for that feedback from the students is interesting."…"But it's telling us that it's alright, which I think is a really good position to be at this stage. You know, given I know some of your dates have picked up that rooms with the modules already running or, you know, the clustering hasn't always worked properly, so people are needing to make last minute changes. So I think that these stats are good and given those circumstances. But then I think it also gives us a good baseline to move it forward over the next couple of years with that."