Paper
Sunday, November 4, 2007
226
Use of Breeze Meeting to Present Master's Culminating Projects
Betsy Frank, PhD, RN, Susan Eley, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, and Lea Hall, MS, RN, FNP-BC. College of Nursing, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, USA
| Learning Objective #1: describe the use of Breeze Meeting for presenting distance education students' culminating projects |
| Learning Objective #2: describe the strengths and challenges of using Breeze Meeting for live presentations involving distance education students. |
This pilot project demonstrated the feasiblity of Macromedia Breeze Meeting as a vehicle for Distance Education students to present, in real time, Culminating Projects . The project included the development of a training module for faculty and students and the purchase of web cams loaned to students for presentations. Asynchronous learning is appropriate for most demonstrations of student learning. But, real time environments are particularly useful for evaluating capstone experiences such as Culminating Projects and Theses. Evaluation consisted of two parts: a standard oral communication tool to evaluate presentation skills and a tool to evaluate technology usage. Based on the evaluation, this emerging technology was deemed useful for project presentations by distance education students. Several important lessons were learned: faculty hosts had to be well trained; scheduling of practice sessions available at multiple times prior to formal presentations was essential; a phone number had to be provided for students to report technical difficulties; students had to send slides via email prior to presentation so the faculty host could upload slides; students had to login one-half hour prior to presentation time for final camera check; technical assistance had to be available during presentations; and debriefing had to occur immediately after the presentations. Possible future use of this techonology could include faculty evaluating students' clinical skills. Future use of this techonology could include faculty evaluating students' clinical skills. Perhaps, once patients and preceptors have consented, nurse practitioner students could conduct patient visits and be observed by the faculty at a distance. Faculty, students and preceptors could conduct evaluation conferences in real time.
Funding provided by an Indiana State University Technology Grant