AUC Academic Conference 98

ABSTRACT

This paper is a little bit like telling the story of how a sow's ear was made into a silk purse; or how victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat. On the other hand, as it is not finished yet, I cannot be sure whether victory has been achieved.

Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) has a poor track record in nursing and nurse education (Murray, 1998). There are many reasons for this: the unwillingness to use programs developed by other institutions, and the "cottage industry" nature of much of the work done. There has also been a general lack of commitment from the managerial level, who have failed to make the necessary investments and support their staff in the development and use of CAL materials.

In late 1996, the decision was made at the Tasmanian School of Nursing to introduce on-line teaching and learning. I first heard of this when I was asked to join a committee which would look at developing a second-year unit into an on-line format.

My background to this was that I had built the Tasmanian School of Nursing's web site. I was self-taught in HTML, was working on a CAUT-funded project in Australian history on-line teaching, called Pictures of Health, and had done some elementary on-line teaching (Martyr 1997a). Only two other members of the eight-person committee had WWW experience - Dr Judi Walker, who worked in the Department of Rural and Community Health, and Mr Geoff Crack, who had been using the WWW for research in the Tasmanian School of Nursing.

The selected unit was called Perspectives on Ageing, a Year 2 semester-long unit on the sociology and politics of aged care. It was clear from the outset that this transition was going to be difficult. There were several key factors that hindered this committee:

A lack of experience in on-line learning
A general lack of experience in WWW use, and a corresponding lack of awareness of the potential of this form of technology
A strong opposition from some members of the teaching team to the use of technology for teaching, because of concerns about economic rationalism and subsequent loss of teaching staff
Confusion about how the internet could be used for effective teaching

One of my chief concerns was that we actually had no real idea of why we were even attempting to enter this area. The motivation seems to have been that on-line learning was what was being done now, and we had to do it too. More concretely, it was perceived that there was 'gold in them thar hills' - that there would be money available if we could draw up grant applications and get onto the CAL bandwagon.

There were other concerns. Our student computer lab was poorly equipped, and we had no real idea of how many of our students actually had internet access. Until we found this out, there seemed little point in continuing.

Nonetheless, under some pointed encouragement from our administrative authorities, we continued. In other words, we had the managerial support in the form of a directive, but no investment in facilities and practical assistance. I wrote an article for the University of Tasmania's internal newspaper, UniTas, in early 1997, entitled "Nursing on-line - on a shoestring" which summed up what we were trying to achieve! (Martyr, 1997a)

I had a series of meetings with the staff teaching in Perspectives on Ageing. In charge of designing the web site, I devoted the bulk of the site to pages which would help the student learn how to use the WWW for learning. This rudimentary site no longer exists, but I can assure you that it was extremely basic. Three members of the four-member course team were largely computer-illiterate, through no fault of their own.

Our "transition" turned out to be no more than transferring the course guide to the WWW, with very little in the way of computer-based learning activities. The server which the TSON was running off at the time did not have sufficient support to allow password-controlled folders, so the material had to be public and thus insecure. This made staff unwilling to put lecture material on the WWW site. Nor did the staff feel confident to run majordomo-based closed e-mail lists as electronic tutorials, so we ran the unit with face-to-face tutorials, and a backup of electronic lists where the students and staff could discuss issues if they felt like it.

Basically, we ended up offering the course under both formats - face to face and electronic. I found that, teaching this unit under both formats, my workload was doubled, and the students made little progress in electronic learning. In short, it was a disaster. We were thoroughly pummelled by the Student Evaluation of Teaching and Learning (SETL), which is the University's internal student assessment of teaching program.

The full gravity of the disaster was not really felt until the following semester. Learning from my mistakes, I had designed a far better format for the unit Child and Adolescent Health, which we were going to try teaching as a purely electronic unit. The students - who had already endured the confused and meandering electronic teaching of the first semester - rebelled, and submitted a petition asking that they be given an option as to how they would undertake the unit, whether face to face or electronically.

We then allowed the students to self-select which version of the course they would take - I had learned from trying to teach both at once. This course was far more successful in every effort, and was an excellent reward for what had been a trying year in flexible course delivery. Of the approximately 260 students in the course, about 60 chose electronic learning, which I taught. We used a web site with full lecture texts, and students worked their way through modules at their own pace. This site can still be viewed at http://www.healthsci.utas.edu.au/nursing/child/titlepage.html, although I am (at the time of writing) working on the 1998 version at another site, which is now password-controlled.

At the end of the course, I evaluated my students’ participation and satisfaction with an internal survey, and the results were excellent. It seemed that this was a far more satisfactory way of conducting electronic learning - students were more content and found the flexible delivery of the work more appropriate for their workloads (Martyr 1998).

I have some figures available on my evaluation.

This table (Table 1) shows the general demographic breakdown of the 60 students who undertook the course electronically. As you can see, the most common user was the female enrolled nurse student, and these were generally older students as well.

This graph (Graph 1) charts the contributions of students and the tutor over the ten weeks of semester. I think the most significant element here is the tapering-off of the tutor’s contributions, as the group became more confident. We did see overall, however, a lowered number of contributions by Week 10.

This graph (Graph 2) shows the overall number of students in the group compared with the number of students actively participating from week to week. As you can see, on a good week we had about two-thirds participation, and on a bad one, about one-third. Those big drops in Weeks 5 and 10 coincided with essays being due in, so this may have had some effect.

Finally and possibly most importantly, the marks. This graph (Graph 3) shows the average percentage grades achieved by students combined with the number of weeks those students participated. The numbers on top of the bars indicate the number of students who participated for that number of weeks.

There does appear to be a relationship between the amount of participation in the on-line course and the grade received, but I think this reflects more the personal motivation of the students involved. Those who were more motivated to contribute were more motivated to work in general.

This year, we are repeating the process - Perspectives on Ageing 1998 had a secure password-controlled folder, on-line lectures, and a more active on-line tutorial group (we once again allowed students to self-select into electronic or face-to-face formats, not both).

It can be viewed at http://www.healthsci.utas.edu.au/poa/ (username = student, password = fogey). I was disappointed that the on-line tutorial groups were not as lively as they had been for Child and Adolescent Health, and am beginning to form the conclusion that there is something about the unit material in Perspectives in Ageing which makes students less enthusiastic.

We are now investigating the possibilities of TopClass as a web-based learning program - passwords, its own e-mail system, and a bulletin board are all features that make it most attractive to us.

But on the whole, the path to electronic learning at the TSON has been extremely difficult. A lack of staff commitment, a lack of investment in appropriate equipment and student support, and above all a lack of purpose and understanding of CAL all contributed to this. My advice would be to look very hard at your existing facilities and your staff competencies and attitudes to computing, as well as your unit outlines, before you make any leap into electronic learning.

References

Martyr, P. 1997a. SPINning the Web, Information Technology in Nursing, vol 9, no 2, 8-9.

Martyr, P. 1997b. Nursing on-line - on a shoestring. UniTas, p 6.

Martyr, P. 1998. Teaching a Bachelor of Nursing unit on-line: some experiences and results. Australian Electronic Journal of Nursing Education, vol 3, no 2.

http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/nhcp/aejne/vol3-2/pjmartyrvol3_2.htm

Murray, P. 1998. 'Can we effectively use networks (telematics) to deliver distance education to enhance patient care?', Nursing Standard OnLine, vol 12, no 17, January 14.

http://www.nursing-standard.co.uk:80/vol12-17/ol-art.htm

Contact details
Dr P J Martyr
Tasmanian School of Nursing
University of Tasmania
Launceston 7250
Phone: (03) 6324 3318
Fax: (03) 6324 3023
E-mail: Philippa.Martyr@utas.edu.au
Website: http://www.healthsci.utas.edu.au/nursing/martyr.html

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