Online collaborative learning for healthcare continuing professional development: a cross-case analysis of three case studies

Abstract

There has been increasing interest in the use of computers to facilitate collaborative learning between healthcare professionals for continuing professional development but many schemes appear to be unsuccessful. The aim of the study was to identify, from a cross-case analysis of three case studies, the main factors that facilitate and inhibit online collaborative learning for healthcare continuing professional development. The intervention was an asynchronous, structured and moderated discussion board. Data were collected by semi-structured telephone interviews on a purposive sample from each case study, documentary analysis of all self-reported comments made in the discussion boards, log of technical problems and evaluation of discussion board activity. Three key factors were identified: the need for implementation based on the requirements of users, the acceptance of this approach by the user and the development of a supportive organization within which the healthcare professionals work. This study has highlighted the overall low level of activity and this would appear to be because implementation has not been based on an understanding of the healthcare context.

Physiotherapy Students’ Use of Online Technology as part of their Learning Practices: A Case Study

“…Even though there have been many attempts to make use of collaborative online tools to facili tate health professional education, these have often been unsuccessful. This has been largely because the contextual working and learning needs of students were not taken into consideration dur ing implementation, and support was not provided (Sandars et al, 2007). Finally, South African students from lower socioeconomic groups have more dif ficulty getting online when they are not on campus, placing them at a greater disadvantage than they already expe rience (Czerniewicz, et al, 2009).…”

Program Evaluation of Health Care Management: Is it adjusted for Students Needs?

“…Beside this fact, changes originating from inside and outside the system have challenged the conventional approaches to management (Sandars et al, 2007;Kazu, 2009). Therefore, an evaluation program involves systematic and complex operations of data gathering, observation, analysis and at the end considering all aspects to be able to judge the quality and to present a solution Duangsin et al, 2011) The evaluation framework which has been recommended to make decisions in high education system includes evaluation of the content, evaluation of the data, evaluation of the processes and evaluation of the results (Farzianpour et al, 2004;Nasiri and Deng, 2009).…”

Researching student perspectives on interprofessional online learning via asynchronous text-based conferencing in healthcare education: A literature review

“…However, whilst six research studies [1,8,[28][29][30][31] evaluated this from the users' perspectives, only two of the six [28,30] had done so with a focus on the online communication patterns. The remaining paper by Zhu [32] had a focus on the interactional patterns of discussions, but it was aimed at establishing the levels of student cognitive engagement through the analysis.…”

“…Six of the seven research studies [8,[28][29][30] were clearly about nurses in mix-disciplinary online learning. The paper in this literature review by Zhu [32] did not specify if the undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare student populations in the online discussions comprised registered nurses.…”

“…Nevertheless, opportunities for interprofessional learning for nursing at post-registration level for Master's programmes or for stand-alone modules aimed at continuous professional development have been increasingly provided by many local universities. For these programmes, asynchronous text-based conferencing with the use of type-written text posted to the virtual learning space for online communication and discussion was commonly used as a pedagogic tool for interprofessional learning at post-registration level [7,8] . Post qualifying nursing students who are professional nurses in practice and who might otherwise be unable to participate in any interprofessional learning due to family and work commitment could then have the opportunity to benefit from learning collaboratively from and with other healthcare professionals [9] .…”