Technology support for teaching health care quality improvement
Date
2001
Authors
Berenji, Gholam Reza
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Abstract
Use of technology in education seems a promising factor to improve students' learning. Most educational institutes have already invested or are ready to invest in educational technology. The School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria, British Columbia, is one of the pioneers of using technology in different courses in its program. This study investigated some aspects of introduction of technology, particularly Internet/CD-ROM based resources and digital video to improve students' learning and performance in a course for teaching Health Care Quality Improvement. Since the introduction of this course in the earl y eighties, it has gone through several changes. Since 1995, the instructor introduced experiential learning components in the course. The most important component was the addition of a project to the course. After several iterations of this project-based approach, video recording of all discussions and presentations related to the project sessions was started. This provided a basis for developing instructional material to further improve the students' success in their project. The implementation and assessment of this approach is the subject of this thesis. The author edited digital video clips and combined them with informative text and some questions to improve students' performance. These were arranged in a CD-ROM/Website by using video-streaming technology. In the most recent offering in the course (Fall 2000), this material was presented to the students. In order to evaluate the results, a questionnaire was handed to all the students in the class. The result of the questionnaire, students' comments and the instructor's self evaluation were the main sources of information for evaluation. The study showed that most of the students (70.8%) found the new approach helpful to perform better in their projects and improve their learning. The distant education participant in this project also found the digital video very helpful. However, some students appear overpowered and their creative choices appear to become restrained by the power of the video material. In conclusion we believe that the new approach improves students ' performance in their project on campus. The new approach also promises to be effective for distant delivery. However, there should be caution with the selection of material and the manner and context in which it is presented in order to prevent undesirable effects such as the adoption of ineffective approaches.