Coventry University: E-Journals
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A Workshop to Help Students Integrate Sources into Their Writing
Get PDFInexperienced academic writers often have difficulty understanding and implementing academic intertextual practices, i.e. interpreting, extrapolating and integrating primary and secondary sources into their own texts. To address this need, we developed a workshop with learning stations. We identified five key difficulties students face and created seven exercises that address them. In the workshop, participants move from station to station, working on the exercises at their own pace by using pre-prepared materials at the stations. In this paper, we describe how we devised the workshop based on analysis of both the problem and the contexts in which the workshop has been carried out. Detailed descriptions for each exercise as well as a dramaturgy of the workshop are included; sample texts and handouts for each station can be found in the Appendix. Based on anecdotal participant feedback, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of the different exercises and of the workshop set-up. With the information provided, readers should be able to replicate this workshop and adapt the exercises to their own educational settings
Influencing Student Attitudes Through a Student-Directed Interprofessional Learning Activity: A pilot study
Get PDFA student-directed approach to interprofessional learning (IPL) can overcome difficulties such as incompatible timetables, limited staff resources and crowded disciplinary curricula. However, it is unclear whether such approaches to IPL can produce quality student learning, including attitudinal change. This study aimed to investigate the influence of a student-directed experiential IPL activity on attitudes towards interprofessional learning and working. A single group, pre/post-test design was used. Participants from medicine, nursing, exercise physiology, diagnostic radiography, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physiotherapy, and speech pathology disciplines completed three validated questionnaires (Revised Readiness for Interprofessional Learning Scale (RIPLS); Modified Interdisciplinary Education Perception Scale (IEPS); and Interprofessional Relationships Scale (IRS)) before and after a five week student-directed interprofessional learning activity. Students were also surveyed on frequency of social media usage and mode of communication with team members during the IPL activity. Seventy-seven students participated in the IPL activity. There were significant increases in the modified IEPS and IRS scores before and after the IPL activity but not the RIPLS. Social media and face-to-face meetings were used equally by students to communicate with team members during the IPL activity. The overall results support the effectiveness of a student-directed experiential IPL activity to significantly influence attitudes towards interprofessional learning and working. This approach may offer a viable means of overcoming the curricular challenges faced when implementing IPL on a large scale. The role of social media in facilitating collaborative learning warrants further exploration
Practice Educators in an Uncertain World: Still Too Much to Ask?
Get PDFIn recent times the complexity and ever-evolving nature of health and social care systems have reshaped professions and rendered the future uncertain. Fast moving social, economic and technological changes have redefined the various roles of practitioners and educators alike. There is a danger that standing on shifting sands may have an adverse effect on the quality and outcomes of learning relationships at all levels of learning and professional development. Nearly two decades ago I suggested that yet another role shift in response to yet another policy change was ‘too much to ask’ of hard pressed practitioners involved in delivering professional education. As the world of health and social care remains uncertain and unpredictable, this paper looks at some of the challenges facing practice-based educators in 2013
Using Participatory Action Research to Support Knowledge Translation in Practice Settings
Get PDFHealth care practitioners must underpin their practice with sound scientific evidence. Yet realising this is not straightforward, especially in light of the amount and appropriateness of research evidence available and its relationship to practice, coupled with practitioners’ own ideology about the contribution of propositional knowledge (the use of propositions, ideas and theories). Knowledge translation is a collaborative means of making the best use of knowledge resulting from theory, policy and research evidence to ensure delivery of best practice to clients and carers to improve health outcomes. This paper presents participatory action research (PAR) as a methodology to meet the challenge of engaging professional staff in knowledge translation to support practice demands through a considered process of reflection, dialogue and action with others. Insights demonstrating PAR methods and results for knowledge translation will be drawn from the literature and from first-hand experience of a professional practice development research project involving occupational therapists working across a health and academic setting in the United Kingdom (UK).The principles and practice of PAR methodology, including a brief history of its purpose and development, are examined. Strategies for ‘getting going’, including consideration of research participant roles, examination of authentic participation and the process of analysis or meaning making are discussed. The overall aim of the paper is to illustrate how PAR might usefully be applied in practice settings to support knowledge translation
Meeting the Students on Their Own Territory
Get PDFBackgroundMedical students receive communication skills training but there is little research into how effectively, or indeed whether, these skills can be transferred into clinical settings. This paper reflects upon a project aimed at supporting students in communicating with patientsin clinical settings during their undergraduate years.MethodDuring 2012, 36 year medical students were directly observed leading consultations with real patients in in-patient settings by a communications skills expert. Each observed session involved focused feedback on performance and agreeing areas for future practice involving a student peer and the member of faculty.Results and DiscussionStudents positively evaluated this work-based experience, specifically, valuing the authenticity of engaging with ‘real patients’ in ‘real settings’. They reported learning to deal with environmental issues such as noise, interruptions – the hallmark of busy clinical settings. They gained from observing the Communication Skills teacher model effective communication within the consultation process and receiving immediate focused one-to-one feedback. Moreover, they were able to maximise the feedback through immediately applying it to further consultations. The challenges of rolling out such a programme to more students are discussed.ImplicationsObserved practice in work-based settings helps students to recontextualise knowledge learnt in the classroom setting. Their learning is greatly enhanced by having the supported opportunity to apply their skills in an authentic setting. However, implementing such a project can be resource intensive and logistically challenging
A Fair Exchange: The Reciprocal Relationship Between Universities and Clinical Placement Supervisors
Get PDFClinical psychology training in the UK relies heavily upon supervised clinical practice placements. Placement supervisors have a significant responsibility for providing trainees with the learning experiences required for qualification. The role is demanding and whilst the university benefits greatly, it is less clear what supervisors receive in return. This is important when one considers how positive relationships and social action are influenced by reciprocity and a sense of belongingness. Despite its importance, no research has directly explored the relationship between supervisors and the university in a clinical psychology training context. This novel study sought to explore how supervisors perceive their role and their connectedness / belongingness to the university, and whether technology utilized by other areas of pedagogy led to improvements. Access to electronic resources was sent to clinical placement supervisors (n=100). A subset of these (n=7) signed up to complete a semi-structured interview. The interviews were analysed using template analysis. Common themes emerged, including perceived benefits of the supervisor role, such as feeling connected to the training course, despite significant challenges and demands. The provision of electronic resources was found to have the potential to enhance connectedness for all stakeholders. The implications of these findings are discussed
Influences and Outcomes: A Systematised Review of Reflective Teaching Strategies in Student Healthcare Placements
Get PDFThe development of reflection in tertiary students benefits from facilitation. Educators commonly facilitate the development of affective, cognitive, and meta-cognitive skills associated with reflection. Reflective teaching strategies, that is, guiding comments or questions used within an activity to stimulate cognitive processes, are strategies used by educators to facilitate reflection. This systematised review focuses on the approaches used to measure influences and outcomes of the teaching of reflection in order to enhance educators’ understanding of recent evidence for use in the placement setting. The review explores what outcome measures are used in current research, and how the evidence incorporates contextual factors such as time, safety, mentorship, supervision, and emotional and intellectual support to develop reflection in students. Systematised searching of CINAHL®, ProQuest, ERIC, OvidSP, Scopus®, and Web of Science™ databases for the period 2005 to 2015 identified 26 studies, from a pool of 6968 that met the inclusion criteria. Results indicate that a range of reflective teaching strategies are being used by allied and oral health, nursing, and the medical professions that assist movement towards critical reflection. No direct connection between this movement and the presence of contextual factors was established. Review outcomes are limited by the variable quality of the included studies and the lack of high quality tools for measurement of teaching effect on the development of reflection. We recommend that future studies into the use of reflective teaching strategies continue to incorporate contextual factors in combination with valid and reliable measurement practices in the workplace
Can Workshops Provide a Way to Enhance Patient/Client Centered Collaborative Teams?: Evidence of Outcomes from TEAMc Online Facilitator Training and Team Workshops
Get PDFThe movement towards collaborative interprofessional teamwork for improving patient care has sometimes been impeded by health providers who have a desire to work together, but are unsure how to move towards such models of care delivery. The situation can be complicated by some reluctance on the part of health care institutions to release staff from normal duties to participate in team building training. The purpose of this study was to report on a collaborative team building process supported by the hospital administration in northern Ontario, Canada, and to provide evaluation results for the Toolkit for Enhancing and Maintaining Team Collaboration (TEAMc) using measurements before the start, at the end of the workshop series and at eight months post-series. Participants were from two teams (Acute Care and Rehabilitation) in a northern Ontario, Canada, hospital. TEAMc was comprised of six, 3-hour workshops offered over six months in 2014/15. A total of 77 health providers completed the pre-intervention Interprofessional Socialization & Valuing Scale (ISVS) and the Assessment of Interprofessional Team Collaboration Scale (AITCS), 50 health providers completed the post-intervention instruments and 32 and at the eight month follow-up. The study found that TEAMc can result in changes in team members’ socialization towards wanting to participate in interprofessional teams and in the team’s ability to emulate interprofessional client-centered collaborative practice. The greatest learning gained by participants was around their role clarification and understanding of each other’s roles and expertise, as well as developing their capacity to use a process to resolve interprofessional conflicts
‘Looking Away’: Private Writing Techniques as a Form of Transformational Text Shaping in Art & Design and the Natural Sciences
Get PDFDespite their long history and wide-spread use, the private writing techniques of journaling and freewriting remain largely underexploited in the field of academic writing instruction. They are seen only as forms of pre-writing, and are criticised by some for being under-theorised, vague and asocial. Contextualizing them within a writing-as-social-practice approach, and drawing on a conceptual framework including a notion of looking-away developed by Derrida, Vygotsky’s conception of learning development, and Ivanic’s notion of writer identity, this paper aims to throw new light on these private writing techniques and argues they can be transformational in developing students’ learning and identity, as well as written and non-written outputs. In this paper we theorise these practices through reflection on two instances of teaching in which they played an important part. The teaching interventions were in different disciplinary contexts (Architectural Design and Natural Sciences), with writers of different levels of expertise/competence (undergraduate and PhD), in both L1 and multilingual settings. In both interventions, we found that these private writing techniques were transformational due to the space they allowed writers to self-reflect, and to look away from their public-facing outputs. The techniques provided significant developmental benefits and moved the students along a continuum towards a more expert-like identity.
