A Blended Health Science Education Graduate Program

Integrating Technology Assignments into Coursework

Sharla King

1,2

, Kim Peacock

and Lili Liu

Faculty of Education, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Health Sciences Education and Research Commons, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Keywords: Blended Learning, Interprofessional Scholarship, Community of Practice.

Abstract: The Master of Education in Health Sciences Education (MEdHSE) program at the University of Alberta,

Canada was created to address the need and desire of health professionals and clinical faculty to enhance

their teaching, leadership, and educational research skills. A blended learning format was adopted to meet

the needs of the learners, all full-time clinical/community educators. A technology integration strategy was

developed that included a course focused on technology integration across the curriculum and technology-

based assignments for each course. Support for instructors was ‘just-in-time’ with an educational

technology consultant providing individual assistance for each instructor. The educational technologist and

graduate students in an educational technology program supported students, with the majority of the

assistance occurring early in the program. Students expressed mixed reviews with the technology-based

assignments, but overall enjoy the blended learning experience.

1 INTRODUCTION

The increasing complexity of health systems

combined with the challenges of managing patients

with multiple morbidities, has resulted in a focus on

how future health professionals are educated. This

includes the preparation of instructors (Frenk et al.,

2010). Continuing health professional education

refers not only to the enhancement of clinical skills,

but also to the enhancement and development of

competencies to develop and deliver quality health

education. In response to this need, Master’s degree

programs have emerged worldwide (Tekian and

Harris, 2012). A core component that seems to be

lacking in most programs is the intentional

development of an educational technology strategy

that is integrated into courses and assignments.

The Master of Education in Health Sciences

Education (MEdHSE) program at the University of

Alberta, Canada was created to address the need and

desire of health professionals and clinical faculty to

enhance their teaching, leadership, and educational

research skills. Additionally, to attract working

health professionals to the program, flexibility with

the delivery of the program was critical. To meet the

learners’ needs for flexibility and to address the

increasing use of educational technology in

instruction, a blended learning program was

developed that ensured integration of technology

throughout the program. This paper will describe the

blended program, outline the process for integrating

educational technology and describe instructor and

student support.

2 BLENDED LEARNING

There is a large and growing body of research that

has shown blended learning to be more effective

than either fully online or fully face-to-face courses

on a number of metrics, including learning outcomes

(Means et al., 2010), student satisfaction (Dziuban,

Hartman and Moskal, 2004; Wingard, 2004) and

levels of student-instructor interaction (Zhao et al.,

2005). The University of Central Florida describes

blended learning as "a pedagogical approach that

combines the effectiveness and socialization

opportunities of the classroom with the

technologically enhanced active learning

possibilities of the online environment, rather than a

ratio of delivery modalities" (Dziuban et al., 2004, p

3). While definitions of what constitutes "blended

231

King S., Peacock K. and Liu L..

A Blended Health Science Education Graduate Program - Integrating Technology Assignments into Coursework.

DOI: 10.5220/0004933302310234

In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2014), pages 231-234

ISBN: 978-989-758-021-5

 2014 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

learning" vary, the courses in the MEdHSE program

are closer to the "online learning" end of the blended

learning spectrum, to the point where the courses

would be considered "online" by some of the more

conservative blended learning definitions (Allen et

al., 2007).

3 THE PROGRAM

3.1 Development of the Program

The MEdHSE program was developed as a

collaboration between the health science faculties

and Faculty of Education at the University of

Alberta. A program development committee was

formed with members’ expertise ranging from

educational technology, curriculum design, medical

education and interprofessional education. The

planning process occurred over a two-year period. A

decision was made early in the planning process to

house the program within the Faculty of Education,

rather than one of the health science programs, to

ensure the program maintained a strong pedagogical

focus across all health science professions. The

program extends the knowledge and skills of health

science educators in the areas of educational

pedagogy, educational research, and

interprofessional leadership within the collaborative

context of communities of practice of professional

educators.

3.2 Program Format

The MEdHSE program is designed for health

professional educators who work full-time or almost

full-time in clinical, community or educational

settings and have a role in the education of future

health providers or other adult learners. This part-

time program is delivered in a blended delivery

format consisting of a small number of face-to-face

classes and online synchronous and asynchronous

sessions. In the initial years of the program,

Elluminate (www.elluminate.com) was the online

synchronous system used to deliver the course. The

University of Alberta recently switched to Adobe

Connect (www.adobe.com) for its online or blended

programs.

Most of the courses have 1 or 2 face-to-face

meetings to supplement the 6 or 7 online classes in

that course. The face-to-face time is mainly used

for course orientation, lab work, student

presentations and some group projects.

One feature of the program is the goal of

developing an interprofessional community of

practice/learners, which facilitates regular

opportunities for engagement, practice and critical

reflection. Instructors and supervisors in the

program are from both the Faculty of Education and

health sciences faculties, with students identifying a

health professional with a university appointment to

serve as a co-supervisor.

All students enter the program in the course-

based stream. At any point during their course of

study, students can elect to switch to a thesis-based

masters, rather than take the course-based masters.

There are eight required courses students must take,

regardless of their choice for course-based or thesis-

based masters. Each course is delivered in a blended

learning format and is 8 weeks in duration. Table 1

provides an overview of the required courses. The

one exception is Curriculum Studies in the Health

Sciences, which is a 5 day intensive course offered

in the spring.

The timing of the face-to-face classes for each

course varies. Typically, the first class is a face-to-

face class in order to introduce the instructor to the

students, with the remaining classes online. For

other courses, the face-to-face class comes near the

end of the course to facilitate presentations or

delivery of student-led content.

Table 1: Summary of required courses.

Year 1

Philosophy of Teaching

Introduction to Methods of Educational Research in

the Health Sciences

Learning and Teaching at the Adult Level

Curriculum Studies in the Health Sciences

Year 2

Applied Research Methods

Integrating Technology Across the Curriculum

Assessment and Evaluation in the Health Sciences I

Assessment and Evaluation in the Health Sciences II

3.3 Educational Technology

In addition to a focus on the core courses, a

commitment was made to expose students to new

technologies used in teaching and learning. This was

achieved through two main mechanisms: 1) a course

called Integrating Technology Across the

Curriculum was offered; and 2) an educational

technology plan for each course was developed.

3.3.1 Technology Integration Strategy

The philosophy with the technology integration

strategy was to build meaningful content together,

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both students and instructors. Two goals were

identified in the planning of the strategy. First,

students in the program would create a series of

practical learning objects and/or exemplars for use in

their professional practice. These items would be

included in the student’s portfolio. Second, students

in the program would employ a variety of techniques

to build a professional learning network (including

both their peers in the program, as well as other

professionals online). Reflections on and examples

of these techniques would be included in the

student’s portfolio. Although the strategy was

developed for the entire program, the adoption was

optional for each instructor with 60% of the

instructors working with the educational technology

consultant to incorporate the strategy into their class.

During the latter stages of the program

development phase, the educational technology

consultant drafted the technology integration

strategy and proposed specific activities and

assignments involving technology for each required

course. Example strategies from 3 courses,

Philosophy of Teaching, Introduction to Methods of

Educational Research and Integrating Technology

Across the Curriculum, are shared.

3.3.2 Examples of Technology Integration

Philosophy of Teaching: the goal was for students to

create a multimedia object that expressed their

philosophy of teaching using an online presentation

tool, Prezi (www.prezi.com). The students were

instructed to develop a personal philosophy of

teaching using topics covered in the class. The

assignment was to include areas of strength, areas

for growth and an action plan for improvement. The

student’s philosophy was to be connected to the

philosophies explored during the course. The

purpose of choosing Prezi for this assignment was to

allow students to convey these often complex and

abstract ideas using a tool that would allow them to

represent their ideas in non-linear formats.

Introduction to Methods of Educational

Research: the goal in this course was for students to

use Twitter (www.twitter.com) as a means of

keeping up with current research and research

methods. At the program’s orientation day, students

were shown how to create a twitter account and

provided with some basic instruction on how to

tweet, retweet and search for people or

organizations. Additional learning objects about

Twitter were created and added to the online course

environment to support students who may have

needed additional support about how to interact

online using Twitter. As part of the course, students

were instructed to develop a Professional Learning

Network (PLN) with other ‘tweeters’ in the area of

educational research, research methods, health

professional education or other relevant field. The

students their PLN and used twitter for 5 weeks. At

the end of this time, they wrote a reflection on their

experiences of using Twitter as a means of

developing a professional network and were asked to

reflect on the question as to whether this was an

effective means of establishing and maintaining a

PLN. Several students created a video reflection,

rather than a written reflection and one even used an

online tool to create avatars to reflect on the use of

Twitter with PLNs.

Integrating Technology Across the Curriculum:

the goal was to provide the students with a variety of

opportunities to work with technology in an applied

way, meanwhile utilizing educational theory to

support their experiences. For example, before the

initial class, students were asked to use Popplet

(www.popplet.com), an online tool that allows one

to record ideas and concepts in a visual way, to share

their ideas about constructivism versus

constructionism. Working alone or in groups,

students were asked to present to the class on the use

of some type of technology. Topics included iPads

in the classroom, the use of simulation in teaching

and mobile technologies. One optional assignment

had the students create an instructional YouTube

video.

Student Feedback on the Technology-based

assignments: with all of the assignments that used

technology, the student reactions were mixed. Some

students relished the opportunity to try new

mediums to share their assignments, while others

wished they could use a more traditional format for

the assignments. Others still grumbled at the start of

the assignment about the use of technology and then

became avid users of the technology. For example,

one student ran lunch time tutorials on Prezi for his

colleagues at work. Other students actively kept up

their Twitter accounts after the course ended and

have further enhanced their PLNs. One student in

particular was very hesitant to even use the

synchronous system at the beginning of the program,

however by the 2

year of the program she was

completing optional assignments using YouTube.

3.4 Instructor Development & Support

In order to support the instructors in the blended

MEd program, special instructor development

sessions were offered. In close collaboration with a

educational technology specialist, individual training

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sessions with each instructor were offered each term.

This was in part due to the diversity of experience

and comfort among the instructors with teaching

online in a blended format, with the technology

tool(s) integrated into their course, and with the

scheduling of their courses within the program. The

educational technologist consultant working with the

program utilized a ‘just-in-time’ approach for

instructor development. When the instructors

required technology consulting for course

development, or technical assistance in-class, the

consultant worked with the instructor on an as-

needed basis. Educational technology students also

provided additional support for some of the online

synchronous sessions.

3.5 Student Development & Support

Student support varied depending on the assignment

and instructor. For tools that were used throughout

the program (e.g., for student learning portfolios),

training time was offered during the student

orientation day. In many classes, the educational

technology consultant was able to provide an

overview or demo of specific tools during class

(either online or face-to-face) and then add

additional support resources to the online course

environment. In the case of more complex

technology tools (e.g. Prezi), two or three additional

evening training sessions were set up that

approximately 25-30% of the students attended.

Some assignments used technology tools that

required very little instruction. In those cases,

online learning objects were created and placed in

the online course environment for students to refer

to. Regardless of the assignment, students were

always welcome to contact the educational

technology consultant for just-in-time support.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Health professional educators need to possess

competence in not only assessment, teaching and

learning, research methods or other traditional core

content, but they also must gain skills in using and

integrating into curricula a wide range of educational

technology.

Preliminary feedback from the students of this

MEdHSE program to the instructors, support

personal and program director has been positive.

Challenges that exist with the technology integration

plan include providing off hours support and training

to busy professional students, motivating instructors

who do not teach these courses more than once a

year to adopt the technology assignment, adopting a

mix of technology tools that are both innovative and

interesting, without being too complex for learners,

encouraging professionals who are generally “risk

averse” to take risks with trying new technology

tools that might positively impact their androgogical

practices.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We wish to thank the instructors in the MEd HSE

program for their continued dedication, and the

Faculty of Education, in particular the Department

of Educational Psychology, for providing unfailing

support.

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