Christine Dearnley

Developing a mobile learning solution for health and social care practice

In this article we share our experiences of a large‐scale five‐year innovative programme to introduce mobile learning into health and social care (H&SC) practice placement learning and assessment that bridges the divide between the university classroom and the practice setting in which these students learn. The outputs are from the Assessment & Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning (CETL), which is working towards a framework of interprofessional assessment of Common Competences in the H&SC professions. The mobile assessment process and tools that have been developed and implemented and the outcomes of the first‐stage evaluation of the mobile assessment tools are discussed from the student perspective.

Factors that contribute to undergraduate student success

In this paper, we report on the outcomes of a study that was designed to explore the significant characteristics of a nursing professional development programme, which was perceived as having a successful outcome in terms of student attrition, academic attainment, practice development, and motivation for study. We provide a rational for the study, and an outline of the research design. An overview of the process of change and development experienced by the student participants is provided, followed by a detailed exploration of the characteristics of the learning experience found to be most significant in driving and sustaining that process. From the outcomes of this study, we draw tentative conclusions, and suggest recommendations for professional learning in higher education and further research.

The preparation and practice of disabled health care practitioners: exploring the issues

Regulatory bodies governing health professions and professional education set clear expectations regarding fitness to practise. Within the UK, the Equality Act, 2010, poses a challenge to regulators, educators and employers to ensure that people are not excluded on the basis of disability and to facilitate inclusion. This research took a mixed methods approach to exploring the tensions between Higher Education providers and placement providers in the health sector. Disabled and nondisabled students and health professionals engaged in semi-structured interviews and a survey in order to explore their beliefs and experiences. The findings suggest that applying equality legislation within health settings may be particularly difficult and that ‘disability’ is an ambiguous and multifaceted concept. Whilst small in scale, the findings have given a voice to a professional group who are underrepresented in research and have raised a number of important issues that merit discussion and further scrutiny.

Service users and carers: preparing to be involved in work‐based practice assessment

This paper will provide an overview of the specific issues related to involving service users and carers in work‐based practice assessment of health and social care students. The outcomes of a shared workshop that involved service users and carers, practice assessors and students in the development of an interprofessional assessment tool, will be discussed. Key areas of concern, across all participants, were related to ethical, reliability and validity issues. These will be explored against the background of current literature, and recommendations will be made for involving service users and carers in assessment of practice. The original work for this paper was part of the Assessment and Learning in Practice Settings (ALPS) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), which is working towards a framework of interprofessional assessment of common competences in the health and social care professions.

The student experience of piloting multi-modal performance feedback tools in health and social care practice (work)-based settings

The aim of this study was to evaluate newly developed performance feedback tools from the student perspective. The tools were innovative in both their mode of delivery and the range of stakeholders they involved in the feedback process. By using the tools in health and social care settings, students were able to engage in interprofessional assessment of common competences and obtain performance feedback from a range of stakeholders not commonly involved in work-based learning; these included peers and service users. This paper discusses the ways in which the performance feedback tools were developed by a collaborative programme and compares their delivery, across a wide range of professions and work-based settings, in paper-based, web-based and mobile formats. The tools were evaluated through a series of profession-specific focus groups involving 85 students and 7 professions. The data were analysed thematically and reduced to three key categories: mode of delivery, assessment tool dynamics and work-based issues. These will be discussed in detail. The students agreed that the structured way of capturing and documenting feedback from several sources would support their practice placement learning. The reflective nature of the tools and the capacity for guiding reflection was also welcomed. The concepts of gaining service user, peer and/or interprofessional feedback on performance were new to some professions and evoked questions of reliability and validity, alongside appreciation of the value they added to the assessment process.

Twelve tips for the use of mobile technologies for work based assessment.

There is increasing interest in the use of mobile technologies (including personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones) for work based assessment. These devices can offer data collection anytime and anyplace but they can also enhance the assessment process by collecting a variety of multimedia. The experience of using mobile technologies for work based assessment in a range of professions has highlighted several important aspects that need to be considered. It is essential that the choice of technology is determined by the overall assessment strategy. Important technology aspects include the choice of device and the method of data collection and transfer. An initial pilot scheme is recommended before widespread adoption so that institutional cultural and information technology (IT) barriers can be identified and overcome.

A group of nurses experience open learning—further explorations of the impact

This paper aims to discuss the findings of a longitudinal study that investigated the experiences of a group of nurses studying on a two year open learning (OL) course. The findings of the pilot phase of this study were published in Open Learning journal in April 2000 (Dearnley & Matthew, 2000). That initial small‐scale study indicated that the OL modality had been influential on the positive outcomes of the course. The main study, discussed in this paper, built upon those outcomes and drew upon earlier works, such as Maslow (1962, 1968, 1970), Perry (1970), Carper (1978) and Belenky et al. (1986) to explore and explain the changing ways of knowing and nursing experienced by the participants.