Learner-Centred Teaching With Netbooks. Three Case Studies Of Mobile Learning In Swiss Schools

Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Studie sind drei innovative, Netbook-gestützte Pilotprojekte mit Lernenden aus Kindergarten, Primarschule und einer Kleinklasse realisiert und systematisch untersucht worden. Schulkinder haben die Mobilgeräte u. a. zu Recherchen in einer Projektwoche zur Erarbeitung einer Zeitung sowie zur Umsetzung der Methode «Lernen durch Lehren» mit Kindergartenkindern eingesetzt.Wir zeigen mit diesem Beitrag auf, wie Netbooks in offen-strukturierten Lernumgebungen soziale, kooperative Lernpraktiken, kontextübergreifendes Lernen sowie multimedial-gestaltende Unterrichtsformen ermöglicht oder unterstützt haben. In der Untersuchung wird insbesondere die Eignung und motivationale Wirkung der Methode «Lernen durch Lehren» im Rahmen eines Netbookeinsatzes deutlich. Die überwiegend lerner/innen- zentrierten Aktivitäten konnten durch Funktionalitäten des Netbooks gut unterstützt werden und haben zu einer grossen Akzeptanz, zu vielfältigen Nutzungsformen und einer hohen Motivation der Lernenden geführt.Within the framework of the present study, three innovative, netbook-supported pilot projects with learners from kindergarten, primary school and a small class were realised and systematically investigated. Schoolchildren used the mobile devices, among other things, for research in a project week for the development of a newspaper as well as for the implementation of the method "learning through teaching" with kindergarten children.We show with this contribution how netbooks in open-structured learning environments have enabled or supported social, cooperative learning practices, cross-context learning as well as multimedia-formative forms of teaching. In particular, the study shows the suitability and motivational effect of the method "learning through teaching" in the context of netbook use. The predominantly learner-centred activities could be well supported by the functionalities of the netbook and have led to a high level of acceptance, diverse forms of use and a high level of motivation among the learners

Learning through inter- and intradisciplinary problem solving: using cognitive apprenticeship to analyse doctor-to-doctor consultation

Today's healthcare can be characterised by the increasing importance of specialisation that requires cooperation across disciplines and specialities. In view of the number of educational programmes for interdisciplinary cooperation, surprisingly little is known on how learning arises from interdisciplinary work. In order to analyse the learning and teaching practices of interdisciplinary cooperation, a multiple case study research focused on how consults, i.e., doctor-to-doctor consultations between medical doctors from different disciplines were carried out: semi-structured interviews with doctors of all levels of seniority from two hospital sites in Switzerland were conducted. Starting with a priori constructs based on the ‘methods' underpinning cognitive apprenticeship (CA), the transcribed interviews were analysed according to the principles of qualitative content analysis. The research contributes to three debates: (1) socio-cognitive and situated learning, (2) intra- and interdisciplinary learning in clinical settings, and (3), more generally, to cooperation and problem solving. Patient cases, which necessitate the cooperation of doctors in consults across boundaries of clinical specialisms, trigger intra- as well as interdisciplinary learning and offer numerous and varied opportunities for learning by requesting doctors as well as for on-call doctors, in particular those in residence. The relevance of consults for learning can also be verified from the perspective of CA which is commonly used by experts, albeit in varying forms, degrees of frequency and quality, and valued by learners. Through data analysis a model for collaborative problem-solving and help-seeking was developed which shows the interplay of pedagogical ‘methods' of CA in informal clinical learning context

Lernen und Kompetenzentwicklung im dynamischen Umfeld klinischer Arbeit : Zusammenspiel und Bedeutung von Lern- und Arbeitsprozessen sowie technologischen Artefakten in medizinisch-klinischen Kontexten

Untersuchungsgegenstand der explorativen qualitativen Studien war Lernen und Kompetenzentwicklung von medizinischen und klinischen Akteuren, d.h. von Medizinstudierenden, Assistenzärzten als auch Ober- und Fachärzten. Auf Basis umfangreicher Forschungsarbeiten, die mit semistrukturierten Einzelinterviews, Fokusgruppen, Dokumentanalysen, teilnehmender Beobachtung und "shadowing" ein sehr breites Spektrum qualitativer Erhebungsmethoden in vier Schweizer und zwei nepalesischen Spitälern umfassten, wurde dieser Themenbereich in vielschichtigen inhaltlichen und theoretischen Dimensionen weiterentwickelt. In den Arbeiten werden die dynamischen Wechselwirkungen von Kontextfaktoren und Lehr-/Lernprozessen am Beispiel interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit in Konsilien aufgezeigt sowie die Bedeutung von Technologien als Lernwerkzeuge für die genannten Zielgruppen in unterschiedlichen organisatorischen und kulturellen Kontexten analysiert. Zudem wird gezeigt, dass für ein zukünftig besseres Verständnis von klinischer Kompetenzentwicklung die Analyse des Zusammenspiels vielfältiger, miteinander eng verwobener, multimodaler Repräsentationen (wie z.B. Sprache, visueller und haptischer, körperlicher und IT- artefaktbasierter Strukturen) notwendig ist. Die einzelnen Arbeiten sind aus sozio-kognitiven, sozio- kulturellen und situierten Perspektiven theoretisch fundiert und haben zur Weiterentwicklung bestehender resp. zur Generierung neuer theoretischer Bezugsrahmen geführt. This thesis uses a qualitative, explorative approach to investigate learning and competence development of medical and clinical actors, i.e., of medical students, residents and attending doctors. Extensive research in four Swiss and two Nepalese hospitals based on a broad spectrum of qualitative methods, i.e., semi-structured interviews, focus groups, document analysis, participant observation, and shadowing, contributed to an advanced understanding of the research field regarding manifold thematic and theoretical dimensions. The studies have yielded the dynamic relations of contextual influences and learning and teaching processes, using the example of doctor- to-doctor consultations. Also, the meaning of day-to-day technology use for learning has been demonstrated in different organisational and cultural settings. The findings suggest that, in order to understand learning and working in clinical contexts more comprehensively, more analytical attention should be paid to the interplay of interwoven, multimodal representations (e.g., speech, visual, haptic, and IT-artefact-based structures). The work is drawing on socio-cognitive, socio- cultural and situated learning perspectives and has resulted in the generation of new theoretical frameworks

IT-enabled Sustainability Transformation—the Case of SAP

This teaching case describes how SAP, a leading global information technology (IT) solutions provider, embarked on a large-scale transformation program to implement a dual sustainability strategy of: (a) internally transforming the organization, and (b) addressing a business opportunity by developing IT solutions that enable their customers to become more sustainable. This case provides students with significant information about the development of SAP towards sustainability, including the company\u27s underlying motivation, their approach to change and related challenges, and their use of IT to enable the transformation. The teaching case provides an opportunity to critically examine the benefits and risks of using IT in an effort to improve the sustainability of an organization, and to develop appropriate models for sustainable strategies and IT implementation efforts

Informal mobile learning in nurse education and practice in remote areas-a case study from rural South Africa

BACKGROUND: With the proliferation of portable digital technology, mobile learning is becoming increasingly popular in nursing education and practice. Most of the research in this field has been concentrated on small-scale projects in high income countries. Very little is known about the ways in which nurses and midwives use mobile technology in remote and resource poor areas in informal learning contexts in low and middle income countries. OBJECTIVES: To address this gap, this study investigates whether nurses use mobile phones as effective educational tools in marginalized and remote areas, and if so, how and why. SETTING AND METHODS: In rural South Africa, 16 nurses who attended an advanced midwifery education program, facilitators and clinical managers were interviewed about their use of digital mobile technology for learning. Techniques of qualitative content analysis were used to examine the data. RESULTS: Several rich “organically-grown”, learning practices were identified: mobile phone usage facilitated (1) authentic problem solving; (2) reflective practice; (3) emotional support and belongingness; (4) the realization of unpredictable teaching situations; and (5) life-long learning. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that mobile phones, and the convergence of mobile phones and social media, in particular, change learning environments. In addition, these tools are suitable to connect learners and learning distributed in marginalized areas. Finally, a few suggestions are made about how these insights from informal settings can inform the development of more systematic mobile learning formats.Web of Scienc

Undergraduate nurses reflections on Whatsapp use in improving primary health care education

Background: The global use of mobile devices with their connectivity capacity, and integrated with the affordances of social media networks, provides a resource-rich platform for innovative student-directed learning experiences. Objective: The objective of this study was to review the experiences of undergraduate nurses on the improvement of primary health care education at a School of Nursing at a University in the Western Cape, South Africa, through the incorporation of a social media application, WhatsApp. Method: A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual design was used to explore and describe data collected from a purposive sample of 21 undergraduate nursing students. The study population was engaged in a WhatsApp discussion group to enhance their integration of theory and clinical practice of the health assessment competency of the Primary Health Care Module. Participants submitted electronic reflections on their experiences in the WhatsApp discussion group via email on completion of the study. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data collected was done according to Tesch’s (1990) steps of descriptive data analysis in order to identify the major themes in the study. The electronic reflections were analysed to explore their rich, reflective data. Results: Seven themes were identified that included: positive experiences using the WhatsApp group; the usefulness of WhatsApp for integrating theory and clinical practice; the availability of resources for test preparation; opportunity for clarification; anonymity; exclusion of students as a result of the lack of an appropriate device, and the application caused the battery of the device to run flat quickly. Conclusion: The results of the experiences of students in the WhatsApp discussion group could be used to inform the use of social media applications in teaching and learning, with the purpose of enhancing the integration of the theory and clinical practice.Department of HE and Training approved lis

The MESSAGEix Integrated Assessment Model and the ix modeling platform (ixmp)

The MESSAGE Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) developed by IIASA has been a central tool of energy-environment-economy systems analysis in the global scientific and policy arena. It played a major role in the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); it provided marker scenarios of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) and the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs); and it underpinned the analysis of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA). Alas, to provide relevant analysis for current and future challenges, numerical models of human and earth systems need to support higher spatial and temporal resolution, facilitate integration of data sources and methodologies across disciplines, and become open and transparent regarding the underlying data, methods, and the scientific workflow. In this manuscript, we present the building blocks of a new framework for an integrated assessment modeling platform; the \ecosystem" comprises: i) an open-source GAMS implementation of the MESSAGE energy++ system model integrated with the MACRO economic model; ii) a Java/database backend for version-controlled data management, iii) interfaces for the scientific programming languages Python & R for efficient input data and results processing workflows; and iv) a web-browser-based user interface for model/scenario management and intuitive \drag-and-drop" visualization of results. The framework aims to facilitate the highest level of openness for scientific analysis, bridging the need for transparency with efficient data processing and powerful numerical solvers. The platform is geared towards easy integration of data sources and models across disciplines, spatial scales and temporal disaggregation levels. All tools apply best-practice in collaborative software development, and comprehensive documentation of all building blocks and scripts is generated directly from the GAMS equations and the Java/Python/R source code