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Background
The aim of this blog is to look at my strategy for future improvements to the Veterinary Nursing School’s flexibility of delivery.
We currently have a good track record of providing a range of learning materials for our students; they have 24 hour access to online notes, assessments and additional information via the Moodle website. This year we have introduced a range of forums and ‘drop in’ sessions that students can use to discuss anything they feel is relevant; this includes both moderated and non moderated sessions, the latter means students can feel free to chat about anything they like in a safe ‘won’t upset the tutor’ environment.
It was the forming of the drop in sessions that made me think about the whole online community way of engaging students. I looked at a couple of models for engaging students firstly the participation model of learning by Collis & Moonen, they suggest that students should learn skills, but that being part of a community is equally important, and Race who suggests we actively embrace all cultures instead of aiming for bland and neutral (something I can’t stand) in an attempt not to upset any particular faction of our students.
So Now I need to look at a forum that will allow me to create a community and embrace all cultures. So what will be flexible, sustainable and engaging?
Blogging!
Strategy
I first set up this blog in an attempt to better understand the way technology has pushed on line learning forward, I have never been one to facebook, tweet or blog so it has been a steep learning curve for me. I want to create an environment that students can interact with each other and with me in a place that feels less like work and more like having fun. I also want to link our students with other forums for veterinary Nursing around the world, after all nursing is all about communicating, and just because it’s working with animals there is little difference in the way we communicate with clients and colleagues.
When I look at sites like the UK Vetnurse, http://www.vetnurse.co.uk/ I find a dynamic interactive and informative forum that links to many others, sometimes it sends me off at a tangent but the content is still fun and usually relevant to vet nursing. My ideal would be to have a one stop shop for students to access information that is lively and fun, we already have Moodle which is going well but I want something that has a bit of my personality about it, I think this might demonstrate to our students that who they are is equally as important as what they can do.
So what is my strategy to do just that?
Firstly this blog, it is only a few weeks old and I am having difficulty figuring out where to go with it, so I plan to get help to Improve this blog from our IT department and my colleagues, then the world is my oyster.
I plan to make sure students who access the site will be able to link to many other vet nursing sites, so I will be incorporating the ‘followers’ gadget in my blog, this allows others to follow this blog and get regular updates through RSS feeds (but as I don’t really know what this means I will need help to set it up).
Secondly to make the site more interactive I will produce videos of some of the procedures vet nurses are expected to do and upload them to Youtube YOU TUBE and link this blog to them. This site has the facility for people to contribute to the videos through comments and suggestions; I think this will also add to the feeling of a global community. I am used to making videos on windows moviemaker so with a little bit of help should be able to produce something worthwhile, I also plan to ask students to be involved so they can feel like a movie star for a day (I think they would like it).
Access, equity, diversity and cultural sensitivity
Maori and Pacific Island students need to be catered for as part of any strategy and the Treaty of Waitangi sets out how inclusiveness is paramount to the welfare of New Zealand, we do not have a large number of indigenous learners accessing our course but this could be increased if we included Maori and Pacific Island students in our videos, photographs and online material, so indigenous people can see we don’t just show ‘white guys doing white guys work’ (I borrowed this quote from a colleague and can’t remember who said it but thanks it really made me think).
The most important part of this plan is how to get it across to the students, they don’t all have unlimited broadband and can watch hours of videos and me waffling on my blog. We do have good access to computers here and many of the full time students bring laptops to class, but it is worth acknowledging that we have a much larger proportion of students doing distance study. We stipulate students have to have a computer, as we produce an on line course, but we don’t take into account that there are ongoing cost of internet use and often limited downloads like 2 gigabytes a month, not a lot if you need to watch videos! So we should be encouraging downloading and saving rather than downloading again and again. I will be asking IT how I can get my videos as small as possible to help out.
Blogging and videos are all well and good but what if a student is a complete technophobe like I was a few months ago, rather than wanting to revert to paper notes (which isn’t very sustainable) I would love to see students encouraged to embrace technology, it is a pity that the community learning centres don’t provide as much free IT training to students as they used to, but there are a lot of resources around the country that can help out, most libraries have internet and there are lots of IT service centres (but I bet they would charge). I don’t really have the answer to this but it is something that I will be looking at. We do have students at block courses around the country so I guess working on the blog with them at this time would be OK but how would they feel part of the community and not having instant access to be able to comment seems to defeat the idea of the blog or is that just me?
Sustainability
Seems to be the buzz word of the era and to most people it means saving paper and ink, in terms of vet nursing my thoughts are around producing competent future nurses who can interact, communicate well and are not afraid to embrace new things. Student nurses working with humans have always been good at looking outside the square; they are used to supervising others and are often articulate when being an advocate for their patient. I would love to see Vet nurses have the same negotiating skills when looking after their patients, and believe that being part of a world-wide vet nursing community will encourage ‘professionalism’ within our students. So what does this have to do with sustainability?
I think that nurses who are autonomous enjoy their work, and being seen as professional raises vet nurses profile with the public and governing bodies, as a past human nurse I can say that being held in high esteem is a major influence on staying in a profession and staying put, using valuable skills and growing with experience has to be the most sustainable thing nurses can do.
So what now?
I need to get more IT training desperately!
Get heaps of links on this blog to sites that are relevant to vet nursing
Stop abbreviating it to vet nursing and encourage students to say veterinary nursing (makes us sound more professional)
Understand the ins and outs of video and youtube.
Stop being afraid to tackle new ideas!
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References
Collis, B. & Moonen, J. (2001) Flexible Learning in a digital world Kogan Page, London.
Race, P. (2007) The Lecturer’s Toolkit, A practical guide to assessment, learning and teaching, Routledge, London.
