3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London Mobile Learning as a Means for Training Health Care Workers at the Tertiary Level Silke Günther Steinbeis-Business Academy Benjamin Feldner, Gabriele Schulz-Salveter

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 2/10  Brief description of context  Degree course to acquire a Bachelor of Arts in Nursing, being developed at Steinbeis Business Academy in Berlin in cooperation with the DRK-Schwesternschaft  Future health care workers can start during the last year of their vocational training and stay enrolled within the first two years of their professional career  Objective  Support health care workers in meeting the increasingly recognized scientific demands of their profession  Blended learning scenarios  Moodle courses Introduction

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 3/10 Research question  German health care workers tend to experience a gap between nursing taught at colleges and their experiences on wards or during ambulatory care  College/ward divide sparked a debate on the changing place of theory  Can integrating mobile learning scenarios into a degree course familiarize health care students with teaching and learning methodologies that bridge the gap between colleges and wards?

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 4/10 Why use mobile learning? Coupled with open-source software tools, mobile devices already accompany health care students in both realms Developing insight into the scientific underpinnings of nursing without tying the experience to classroom- bound education Preparing health care workers for lifelong learning processes

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 5/10 Developing mobile learning scenarios Steinbeis Business Academy already offers a variety of Moodle courses to its students Moodle is the most widely spread open source Learning management system (LMS) in Germany Making use of available infrastructure and experiences Adding mobile learning by making the course material accessible via Moodle for Mobile Phones (MOMO)

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 6/10 Moodle for Mobile Phones MOMO is an Add-On for Moodle that enables its users to implement mobile learning scenarios using Moodle as a backend Users need to install a Java-based application on their mobile phones to access Moodle courses Designing courses that incorporate mobile elements or offering entire mobile learning scenarios using the tools and methods offered by Moodle

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 7/10  Aid students in constructing knowledge on scientific procedures and research  Prepare them for forms of Evidence-Based Nursing (EBN) – basing nursing practise on nursing knowledge  In general, scenarios should leverage the potential of quickly getting access to scientific resources, such as specific data bases for health care literature The first mobile learning scenario I

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 8/10 The first mobile learning scenario II Acquiring the skills to quickly locate, retrieve and evaluate nursing literature Students apply their skills in the context of scenarios that require them to make informed decisions on current issues in inpatient as well as outpatient care Support the development of information literacy at the level of tertiary education

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 9/10 Evaluation Work in progress Degree course will start in autumn 2010 One scenario will be evaluated If a formative evaluation shows that the students benefit from blended learning scenarios, more courses will be made available

3 rd WLE mobile learning Symposium, 27 March 2009, WLE, London 10/10 Critique/ reflections  Interdisciplinary cooperation  Level of tertiary education  Using mobile learning at different levels of training health care workers  Suitable topics  Clearly work in progress