By: Iain McGowan & Maggie Bennett
These are challenging times and Nursing and Midwifery education. The last few months, with the COVID-19 situation, have challenged the creativity and resilience of nurses and midwives globally. Nursing & Midwifery students at QUB have played a pivotal role in supporting Northern Irelands registrants deal with the crisis as it unfolded. We write this at a time where it is possible that worst of pandemic may have passed, but the Covid 19 legacy is not just in the news headlines– the fundamental nature of nursing and midwifery education has changed.
Social distancing measures have drastically reduced the capacity for in class teaching. Large scale lectures will be curtailed and with the number of students in the school face to face tutorials are likely to reduce. As New York state governor stated in May,
‘The old model of everybody goes and sits in a classroom and the teacher is in front of that classroom, and teaches that class, and you do that all across the city, all across the state, all these buildings, all these physical classrooms … why, with all the technology you have? … It’s hard to change the status quo. But you get moments in history where people say, ‘OK I’m ready. I’m ready for change. I get it’. I think this is one of those moments.’
QUB generally, and the School of Nursing and Midwifery in particular, are embracing this challenge. Connected Learning has the potential to enhance the delivery of the educational experience for our students. This blog aims to provide a platform for staff and students to reflect upon and share their experiences of connected learning.
Let us know your thoughts by clicking on the ‘leave reply’ link and commenting below.
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About the authors
Iain McGowan is Senior Lecturer (Education) at QUB. He is a mental health nurse with a passion for finding ways to automate the more mundane aspects of academic life.
Maggie Bennett is a Lecturer (Education) at QUB. She believes teaching like nursing is fundamentally about caring.
Maggie and Iain are co-editors of this blog. To contact them, please see the contact us page
Important points here that I fully support, I am hoping that out of the current situation that we all find ourselves in that we don’t slip back into the ‘old ways’ in education. I hope we can embrace the change and challenges see them as opportunities to move forward and make full use of all the pedagogical learning and learning technology to enhance student learning and my role satisfaction. My personal experience of working with teaching colleagues over the past few months has been very positive and I want to build on them moving forward.
-Thanks Maggie and Iain, these are important issues and I applaud you both for opening up this discussion – because it’s a great way we can all listen and learn from each other’s experiences. In doing so I think the importance of developing that “connection” that underpins our profession in so many ways has never been more important. Not just for our students, but for each one of us, for patients, for our professional colleagues in practice and our family and friends. These are strange and somewhat scary times for us all – let’s take all the good that there is undoubtedly amongst it and learn and support each other through the tougher bits!
In September 2019 we were all really pushing ourselves to try and get used to the functionality of a new Canvas VLE. Strong opinions were held by many of us alongside a certain level of scepticism as to what we could and even would do online with many debates and discussions across committees and in tearooms. In September 2020 so many new skills in the use of technology (and frustrations!) have been developed in such a short space of time which is commendable to the commitment and educational desire of staff and students across the School. Going forward getting the right ‘blend’ of educational delivery for students and staff will be so important. Thanks Maggie and Iain for opening up this discussion.
Thanks Iain and Maggie, great to open a conversation about this shift in mindset, location, style, content and delivery of teaching practice.
We’ve made so many changes in such a short space of time that it has been difficult to apply the co-design principles that include student views and preferences for how we teach. As we develop and deliver our brand new co-designed curriculum this year, the student feedback processes will be incredibly useful and important. I imagine a mixture of formal and informal feedback will appeal to most, and I look forward to embracing that input over the coming months.
Karen, thank you for raising such an important point. We are delighted to say two students will be sharing their experience of the rapid move to online learning earlier this year in our next blog post on Friday. We look forward to more students sharing their views and experiences.
Thank you Iain and Maggie for taking up this conversation! As we move into the next academic year with new programmes and a different way of working, we have a real opportunity to develop new and exciting ways of intentionally connecting different learning environments. I really look forward to the ongoing conversation on this blog! Great work!