Paper
Thursday, July 22, 2004
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Thursday, July 22, 2004
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Teaching Heart and Soul Using Information Technology
Ailsa Haxell, RCpN, MHSc, School of Nursing, Division of Health Care Practice, Akoranga Campus, School of Nursing, Division of Health Care Practice, Akoranga Campus, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
Objective: The changing culture of the tertiary education sector has substantial impact on the preparation of a vocational workforce. The need to prepare nursing graduates for more, with less, provides optimists a challenge. Design: Being an optimist, flexibility has led to the development of an online practice-based learning approach that optimizes flexibility while maintaining the student-lecturer contact for the critical interpersonal teaching moments. The learner is enticed with curiosity, practical application can be facilitated in safe scenarios, and the lecturer role emphasizes the need for being engaged and facilitative. Interpersonal contact, that is the crux of clinical work as well as educative work, is honored in form as well as in function. Population: 75 pre-registration students in the BHSc (in Nursing) at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Intervention: A change in the nursing curriculum utilizing web enhanced, practice-based teaching and learning resources. Method: Qualitative data gathered regarding the learning experience involving the practice-based, web enhanced teaching and learning tool. Findings: Overwhelmingly positive. Technology can be used effectively in engaging students and invoking a critical imagination. Wanting to understand and wanting to be effective in working with people with mental illness are powerful motivators for learning. Conclusions: The use of innovative technology provides opportunity for realizing humanistic qualities integral both to nursing and to education. Implications: There is no need to fear technology in taking away issues of heart and soul. Challenge in the presence of hope engenders creative possibilities. Practice-based web-enhanced teaching provides a medium through which student's critical imagination can be invoked and a stimulus for their own learning facilitated.
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Sigma Theta Tau International
July 22-24, 2004