Enhancing the Undergraduate Experience Through A Collaborative Wiki Exercise To

Teach Nursing Students Discipline Specific Terminology

Dr. Iain Doherty*

Dr Michelle Honey+

Ms. Lisa Stewart+

*eLearning Pedagogical Support Unit, CETL, HKU+School of Nursing, University of Auckland

Project Background

• Research project involved undergraduate nursing students in a blended learning environment working in small groups where they made use of a wiki to develop a collaborative glossary of health specific terminology.

• Previously students had been provided with a weekly list of relevant nursing and clinical terms that related to their lectures and case studies. Students were expected to memorize the terms and were tested on their recall at the end of the semester.

2

Project Background

• The change of direction to making use of wikis aimed at providing students with a medium to gain a more in depth and contextual understanding of discipline specific knowledge and professional vocabulary.

• This in depth and contextual understanding is essential for students’ future communication in the healthcare environment where they have to apply what they have learned as they work in a hospital setting.

3

Project Background

• The first step in the process of creating a successful Wiki activity is to ensure that the elements in the teaching situation – learning outcomes, teaching activities, technologies and assessment(s) are aligned such that there are clear and logical relations between the elements.

• In particular, students need to see that the activity is one that will support them in achieving the intended learning outcomes that will be assessed at the end of the course.

4

Project Background

• Whilst alignment of the technology with the other elements in the teaching situation is important, alignment per se does not guarantee that students will in fact work collaboratively or contribute equally to a Wiki exercise.

• The literature indicates a number of additional factors that can help to ensure that students participate in Wiki exercises.

5

Project Background

• First, the wiki must be easy to use and students must be adequately supported in the use of the Wiki

• Secondly, students need to be given adequate guidance concerning what is expected of them in the Wiki activity. There are two aspects to this guidance: – The expectations around collaboration must be made

clear; and – The expectations around the quality of the final output

must be made clear.

6

Study Aims

• The aim of this study was to determine whether a collaborative exercise to teach undergraduate nursing students discipline specific terminology resulted in improved student learning.

• We defined an improvement in student learning in terms of students moving beyond the ability to recall the nursing discourse terms and their definitions in order to be able to demonstrate contextual understanding of the discipline terms.

7

Study Aims

• The change in learning that we were looking for can be understood in terms of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning in the Cognitive Domain (Bloom 1956). The progression in learning is one of moving beyond the recall that was achieved in the previous teaching approach to students demonstrating a contextual understanding of the meaning of the terms (comprehension) in a clinical scenario assessment. The final test of learning is students applying what they have learned in the hospital setting.

8

Research Method

• We conducted a randomized control trial to determine whether a collaborative learning exercise would lead to improvements in student learning.

• Our trial involved a control group (wiki activity in which students were free to reflect on any aspect of the course + learned glossary terms in traditional ) manner and an intervention group (wiki activity for the creation of glossary terms and definitions).

9

Research Method

• The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences Learning Technology Unit assisted in the production of six video clinical scenarios and created an online multiple-choice test to assess students’ knowledge of clinical terms prior to the introduction

• Students were asked to identify terms in relation to particular activities that were taking place in the videoed scenarios. The Learning Technology Unit also set up 8 wikis using a free Wikispaces account.

10

Research Method

• The dependent variables in this study included participants’ experience of the learning exercise, participants’ gains in knowledge and participants’ ability to apply their new knowledge to clinical scenarios.

• We adopted a mixed method approach by including: a pre and post course assessment; a course evaluation; and focus group interviews to evaluate the impact of collaborative learning on students’ clinical practice.

11

The Study

• The research project was explained to students at the beginning of the semester – including the fact that the project had ethics approval – and students were advised that they would be awarded an additional 5% for participating in the pre-course assessment, wiki exercises and post-course assessment.

• Students’ marks on the pre and post course assessments did not count towards their final grade i.e. the additional 5% was simply for participation.

12

The Study

• Students (N=105) self selected into 8 tutorial groups with each tutorial group consisting of between 12 to 14 students.

• Groups were then randomly allocated to either control or intervention.

• We then invited the members of each of the randomized tutorial groups to join one of the eight wikis (4 wikis for control and 4 wikis for intervention).

13

The Study

• The control group were asked to use the wiki to reflect on the course e.g. content, additional resources and their own learning.

• The control groups were also advised that they would be learning the discipline terms as per previous years i.e. through being provided with definition lists to study.

• The intervention group were asked to contribute three glossary terms per week and to comment on at lest one term provided by another student.

14

Results

• The vast majority of students (n=97, 92%) completed the pre-course assessment.

• Results ranged from a score of 3 /15 to a score of 15 / 15, with an average score of 12.15 out of 15.

• The activity on the wikis has also been monitored over time.

• Preliminary findings indicate that both the control and intervention group wikis are equally active.

15

Results

• There is evidence of students collaborating in both groups. However, students added to the intervention group wiki more consistently and the wikis appear to be more structured than the wikis in the control group.

• Students in the control group have, however, been more creative. For example, students have added YouTube videos and other web links to items that in some way relate to the course content.

16

Results

• A full analysis of the wiki contributions will consist of assessing the wiki postings using a rubric that will define the type and quality of the wiki postings e.g. factual content, critical content, revision content etc. We will also be using the Wiki reporting function to determine e.g. how often students accessed the wiki.

• Focus group interviews have been carried out and the data is currently being analysed.

17

Discussion

• We can already see that there is an issue with the pre / post assessment exercise as the mean score for the pre-test was 12.5 i.e. very high.

• This means that it will potentially be difficult to show gains in learning for this cohort of students.

• The assessment exercise was created by lecturers and there was no reason to think that students would have scored so highly on the pre-course assessment.

18

Discussion

• The qualitative data gathered from the focus group interviews is potentially very interesting in terms of students’ perceived ability to apply their learning in practice.

• Our thinking here revolves around the possible difference between understanding a term contextually in a teaching and learning environment and being able to make use of any particular term appropriately in the very different environment of a hospital setting.

19

Discussion

• Finally, interviewing the students’ concerning their experiences of working collaboratively in a wiki environment may yield some interesting results, particularly in terms of whether or not students learned the social skills required to work as part of a team.

• The ability to function as part of a team is an important part of being a practising nurse and we will be looking to see whether students developed as team players during the wiki exercises.

20

Concluding Remarks

• This initiative was driven by the desire to engage students at a deeper level with the nursing terminology that they need to master in order to be able to work in a hospital setting. We remain of the opinion that this is a worthwhile initiative and we are committed to this pedagogical aim.

• However, from a research perspective we definitely face the challenge of establishing a meaningful baseline in future years so that we might have a measure of gains in knowledge during the course.

21