Katy Campbell

Instructional technology in medical education: lessons learnt

New instructional technologies, especially Web-based applications, may play an increasing role in medical education, particularly for distance and distributed learning. As medical educators turn to this medium, numerous benefits and opportunities, but also challenges and pitfalls, will arise. The successful development and implementation of instructional technologies in medicine require an appreciation of the mediums heterogeneous nature, its strengths, weaknesses and limitations. These in turn rely on partnerships with various experts and the early adoption of evaluation. We have summarized the lessons learnt from developing Web-based courses on palliative care in a framework for adopting instructional technologies. This framework incorporates development, implementation and evaluation.

The Feminist Instructional Designer: An Autoethnography

The following excerpts reflect a set of values and assumptions about instructional design as a scholarship and a practice. However, one of them is not like the others.

On-line Learning For Abused Women and Service Providers In Shelters: Issues Of Representation And Design

The challenge and potential of Internet technology to deliver learning services to increasing numbers of diverse learners who may not be included in formal continuing education settings are beginning to be addressed. VIOLET ( http://www.VIOLETnet.org ), a web site for abused women and their service providers, is designed to provide relevant legal information, an on-line community for support and sharing of experience and information, and on-going updates of legal information and community services. The project emerged out of a unique collaboration among women in many local and national communities and organizations and the Legal Studies Program at the Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta. Together they developed a safe space on the Internet for abused women, inclusive of gender, language, cultural, and learning style issues. A technology that widens access to information may also present barriers to access. In this paper we explore some of these barriers and their implications for the design of information resources and learning environments for abused women. These issues are described using an account of the formative evaluation of the projects web site.

Conflict, risk and authority: female faculty members' stories of change

Abstract Most studies of gender and information technology have investigated gender differences in the relationships between education and achievement, and attitudes towards and use of computers. Few have explored gendered experiences of faculty members using learning technologies in higher education. The study on which this article is based explored the experiences of 47 Canadian female faculty members integrating information and communications technologies (ICTs) into the higher education learning environment. The stories they told suggest that learning to use ICT in ways coherent with their values may be an intensely personal process of cognitive and cultural change for these women, in which beliefs and values may be examined and even realignedas they develop personal, moral authority. When faculty members explicitly contextualize the process as social, relational learning, it has the potential to be transformative at personal and societal (institutional) levels. The interrelated theoretical constructs of transformative or action learning, the development of authority-into-agency, and technology issues related to feminist pedagogy frame the three illustrative narratives of experience presented.