Blogs Enhance Assessment and Patient Care Skills

Who: University of York What: Blogs

Objective: Develop a distance learning course for coronary heart disease prevention that would not just stimulate nursing practice, but also give students the opportunity to look at practice with a patient over and above the normal classroom experience.

Process: The new course supported a problem-based learning approach, in which students engaged with patient case histories over the duration of the 14-week term. The University’s VLE hosted the case studies and risk assessment activities and Campus Pack blogs were used to support interactive and reflective journaling activities. Students, as a part of engaging with each case history, reviewed specially prepared online video sequences of patient and practitioner interactions. They then posted their observations about the exchange on a personal blog. These observations varied from activity to activity and covered areas such as where the practitioners approach was flawed or effective, or what level of care they felt the patient may require. The posted observations had viewing access restricted to their tutor only and the tutor then used the blog commenting feature to feedback to the students. An open blog called the “Coffee Room” was also provided with contribution privileges given to the entire cohort. This was used for broad discussion in and around course themes as well as social non-course related themes and work oriented observations.

Results: The role of the blogs was important in the success of the course. The personal blogs helped to stimulate informal discussion and reflection on the practical scenarios and provided a private conduit for communication between student and tutor. The Coffee Room allowed students to pose questions themselves and then discuss the key issues. Both blogs formed an archive that the students could later easily look back on and review. The course has run six times with plans to continue the offering. To learn more, access the University’s expanded case study here.