Creating an Online Interprofessional Collaborative Team Simulation to Overcome Common Barriers of Interprofessional Education

Introduction: Coordinating student schedules, physical space, and faculty time are commonly reported barriers to successful interprofessional education. Use of online technologies to overcome these barriers and support online team simulation is a topic that deserves serious academic review. Methods: The Interprofessional Plan of Care - Simulated E-hEalth Delivery System (IPOC-SEEDS) is a student-directed online simulation where students experience a collaborative plan of care meeting with simultaneous team electronic health record utilization. The authors describe the IPOC-SEEDS simulation to serve as a model for replication or modification. IPOC-SEEDS objectives address Interprofessional Education Collaborative competencies (IPEC), electronic health record (EHR) navigation, simulation effectiveness, and technology utilization. Results: Overall, IPOC-SEEDS objectives were effectively met through simulation evaluations, student-led debriefing evaluations, in-person student feedback, and faculty feedback results supporting the online simulation and technology evolutions. The objectives, based on IPEC and informatics competencies, were achieved. Students from nursing, nutrition, pharmacy, occupational therapy, and health information management participated in the simulation using EHR and online meeting software, receiving valuable interprofessional practice. Technology utilization results were adequate, but did improve in subsequent simulations after modifying the technology selected. Discussion: The simulation provided an experience where students demonstrated interprofessional collaborative skills that they can use in their future practice. Online technologies can provide a platform for the high-quality interprofessional simulation to address common interprofessional education barriers and provide access to interprofessional education for distance-learning students and providers. Online simulation developers (hospitals, health departments, universities) can use the authors’ process steps as a model for online simulation replication

Using a simulated student to repair difficulties in collaborative learning

We describe the use of a simulated student in a synchronous but distributed collaborative learning environment in the domain of programming. The role of the simulated student is to detect and repair difficulties in collaborative learning amongst the human students, for example when a human student is too passive or when the students start chatting about off-topic conversations. The simulated student intervenes by posting messages in the shared "chat" window, just like the human students and was believed to be another human student by them. The paper describes the rules by which the simulated student operates and briefly outlines an evaluation of the system with university first year programming students. The system proved to be successful both in detecting a range of difficulties and in intervening effectively

Exploring Predictors of Teamwork Performance in an Interprofessional Education Setting

Abstract EXPLORING PREDICTORS OF TEAMWORK PERFORMANCE IN AN INTERPROFESSIONAL EDUCATION SETTING By Danah M. Alsane, MS. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Pharmaceutical Science at Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University, 2016 Advisor: Patricia Slattum, Pharm.D., Ph.D. Professor and Director of the Geriatric Pharmacotherapy Program Department of Pharmacotherapy and Outcomes Science Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to explain how individual characteristics influence teamwork development. In addition, it evaluated how teamwork development, in conjunction with content knowledge, impact students’ performance on a team-based project in an Interprofessional Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (IPQIPS) course. Methods: This cross sectional study included medical, pharmacy, and nursing students enrolled in an IPQIPS course offered for the first time at VCU. Predictors of teamwork development examined included collective orientation (measured using the Collective Orientation Scale, which included dominance and affiliation subscales), and prior interprofessional teamwork experience (measured using self-report). The Team Development Measure (TDM) was used to measure teamwork development. The Statistical Process Control Quiz (SPCQ) was used to assess content knowledge acquired during the course. The final project score was used to evaluate students’ performance on a team-based project. Structural equation modeling was used to test study hypotheses. Results: Among the proposed predictors (dominance, affiliation, and interprofessional teamwork experience), only dominance was related to TDM. No significant relationship was found between teamwork development combined with content knowledge and successful accomplishment of team-based project. Conclusion: This study was the first to our knowledge to simultaneously assess the impact of individual characteristics on teamwork development, and how teamwork development (combined with individual student knowledge) influences students’ performance on team-based project in an interprofessional education setting. Although findings were not conclusive, several potential avenues for future study are highlighted

Negotiating the Maze: Case based, Collaborative Distance Learning in Dentistry

The module was developed as an elective to give motivated senior dental students an opportunity to expand their horizons in planning oral rehabilitation. It comprised one tutor and 12 students, from five universities world-wide, communicating on the World Wide Web (WWW), to develop oral rehabilitation plans for simulated patients. Trigger material came from one of two Case Profiles and consisted of diagnostic casts and details of the clinical and radiographic examination in WWW/CD-ROM form. No background material was supplied as to the "patient's" age, sex, history or main concern(s). Students worked in groups of three, each student from a different location. Individual students were given a role within the group: "Patient", who developed a "personal background" belonging to the trigger examination material, "Academic" who identified state-of-the-art treatment options available for the dental treatment needs identified by the group and "General Practitioner" who tailored these options to the "patient's" needs and wants. Student feedback focused on their perception of their experience with the program in response to a questionnaire comprising 11 structured and four "open" questions. All students felt that the program increased their confidence in planning oral rehabilitation. Ten students felt that the "best thing about the program" was the interaction with students from other universities and the exposure to different philosophies from the different schools. Eight students mentioned their increased awareness of the importance of patient input into holistic planning. Under the heading "What was the worst thing", students cited some technical hitches and the snowball effect of two sluggish students who were not identified early enough and thus impacted negatively on the working of their groups. Student feedback showed that the module succeeded in its aims but needed modification to improve the logistics of working with an extended campu

A Hybrid Recommender Strategy on an Expanded Content Manager in Formal Learning

The main topic of this paper is to find ways to improve learning in a formal Higher Education Area. In this environment, the teacher publishes or suggests contents that support learners in a given course, as supplement of classroom training. Generally, these materials are pre-stored and not changeable. These contents are typically published in learning management systems (the Moodle platform emerges as one of the main choices) or in sites created and maintained on the web by teachers themselves. These scenarios typically include a specific group of students (class) and a given period of time (semester or school year). Contents reutilization often needs replication and its update requires new edition and new submission by teachers. Normally, these systems do not allow learners to add new materials, or to edit existing ones. The paper presents our motivations, and some related concepts and works. We describe the concepts of sequencing and navigation in adaptive learning systems, followed by a short presentation of some of these systems. We then discuss the effects of social interaction on the learners’ choices. Finally, we refer some more related recommender systems and their applicability in supporting learning. One central idea from our proposal is that we believe that students with the same goals and with similar formal study time can benefit from contents' assessments made by learners that already have completed the same courses and have studied the same contents. We present a model for personalized recommendation of learning activities to learners in a formal learning context that considers two systems. In the extended content management system, learners can add new materials, select materials from teachers and from other learners, evaluate and define the time spent studying them. Based on learner profiles and a hybrid recommendation strategy, combining conditional and collaborative filtering, our second system will predict learning activities scores and offers adaptive and suitable sequencing learning contents to learners. We propose that similarities between learners can be based on their evaluation interests and their recent learning history. The recommender support subsystem aims to assist learners at each step suggesting one suitable ordered list of LOs, by decreasing order of relevance. The proposed model has been implemented in the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS), and we present the system’s architecture and design. We will evaluate it in a real higher education formal course and we intend to present experimental results in the near future

Innovating Pedagogy 2015: Open University Innovation Report 4

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This fourth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in post-school education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation

Assessing collaborative learning: big data, analytics and university futures

Traditionally, assessment in higher education has focused on the performance of individual students. This focus has been a practical as well as an epistemic one: methods of assessment are constrained by the technology of the day, and in the past they required the completion by individuals under controlled conditions, of set-piece academic exercises. Recent advances in learning analytics, drawing upon vast sets of digitally-stored student activity data, open new practical and epistemic possibilities for assessment and carry the potential to transform higher education. It is becoming practicable to assess the individual and collective performance of team members working on complex projects that closely simulate the professional contexts that graduates will encounter. In addition to academic knowledge this authentic assessment can include a diverse range of personal qualities and dispositions that are key to the computer-supported cooperative working of professionals in the knowledge economy. This paper explores the implications of such opportunities for the purpose and practices of assessment in higher education, as universities adapt their institutional missions to address 21st Century needs. The paper concludes with a strong recommendation for university leaders to deploy analytics to support and evaluate the collaborative learning of students working in realistic contexts

Application of a virtual scientific experiment model in different educational contexts

E-learning practice is continuously using experimentation in order to enhance the basic information transfer model where knowledge is passed from the system/ tutors to the students. Boosting student productivity through on-line experimentation is not simple since many organizational, educational and technological issues need to be dealt with. This work describes the application of a Learning Model for Virtual Scientific Experiments (VSEs) in two different scenarios: Information and Communication Technologies and Physics. As part of the first, a VSE for Wireless Sensor Networks was specified and deployed while the second involved the specification and design of a collaborative VSE for physics experiments. Preliminary implementation and deployment results are also discussed

A virtual practice community for student learning and staff development in health and social work inter-professional education. Mini-project evaluation report.

Interprofessional education (IPE) has been widely advocated and developed as a means to encourage effective collaboration in order to improve public sector services. An IPE curriculum was introduced at Bournemouth University from 2005 for all nursing branches, midwifery, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, operating department practice and social work students (n=600). Challenges of this ambitious and large scale project included facilitating meaningful interprofessional learning while balancing structural complexities of professional body requirements and the logistics of large student numbers and multi-site teaching. A web-based simulated community was created, known as Wessex Bay, as a learning resource to facilitate interprofessional learning around case scenarios. An evaluation of student and staff experiences of IPE over two years, focusing principally on the use of technology in the education process was implemented. Student and staff data were collected via e-surveys, focus groups and open-ended questionnaires with additional feedback from external reviewers specifically on Wessex Bay. Qualitative data were subjected to thematic analysis. Whilst the findings are not claimed to be representative, they provide a rich insight into student and staff experiences of technology enhanced learning in IPE. The richness and complexity of data has led to a number of project outcomes with wide-ranging implications for interprofessional education. This research has led to the identification of three major territories of praxis in which individuals, both students and tutors, are operating in IPE, namely professional differences and identity, curriculum design and learning and teaching strategies, and technology enhanced learning. For the purposes of this report, we will discuss the findings related to student and staff experiences of technology enhanced learning in IPE. The evaluation of the findings highlighted three issues; the level of student and staff knowledge and skill in using learning technologies impacted significantly on learning; there was a need to capitalise on the use of web-based learning resources by increasing interactivity within the scenarios; and finally student and staff experiences of the learning resources was enhanced by a positive learning culture to facilitate creative use of materials. All project aims and objectives were met, and whilst more focused staff and student development in using learning technology is required, a culture of working interprofessionally among students and academic staff has begun to develop, leading to the sharing of ideas about content and learning processes. Recommendations resulting from the project include the introduction of assessed development of student and staff learning technology skills; development of more interactive web-based learning embedded within the case scenarios; and streamlining of the scenarios to provide fewer, but more developed, cases