A Learning-by-Doing Approach to Medication Management for Adolescent Diabetics

Abstract

Abstract⎯Many people suffer from potentially dangerous diseases. This paper is concerned with diabetes, in particular for young patients. Of course, most patients would agree that they need to worry about the risk of being taken ill in both the long and the short term. In principle, therefore, they are willing to change their behaviour according to medical stipulations. In the case of diabetes, this comprises measuring the level of glucose in the blood, observing a strict diet and exercising regularly. In practice, however, this turns out to be difficult for many patients. Making this a classical case of learning, the link from theory (knowing the mechanics of the disease) onto practice (changing the behaviour) needs to be strengthened. We propose a tool that may contribute to this, by explicating the dialogue between the learner and the "textbook model," which is an aggregate of medical expertise, parental supervision, personal experiences and the adaptation to the social and situated context. The tool is based on an explicit learning model, but the purpose is not one of promoting this particular model before the alternatives. The aim of this paper is to show how the tool can accommodate such models in general, and be used to further investigate their effectiveness in an empirical fashion. The selected model does, on the other hand, explicate a mobile and collaborative form of learning that may be useful in the context of treating adolescents with diabete