Project RITE

The project team is preparing for a focus group with subjects next week. We will have miminal data because students have only had their handhelds for about 3 weeks and there was not adequate class time to effectively incorporate the strategy into classroom and clinical learning. Regardless, because the students have used the tools independently for 3 weeks, we hope to gather information about how students envision using the tools in healthcare education.

Because of the significant delay in receiving equipment, we will extend this pilot through the summer semester. The subjects will have similar demographics and may or may not be students enrolled in a nurse practitioner program. Regardless, all students are graduate nursing students. The students who will use the technology and participate in the study this semester are students interested in nursing education, hence, their enrollment in the summer course; N 566: Educational Principles and Strategies.

We finally received the handhelds and the software applications are arriving each day. We plan to distribute the handhelds to students this upcoming week. We only have about three weeks out of the semester to perform our pilot. For this reason, I am going to extend the pilot to another group of students during the summer session. Between the two groups of students, it is hoped that we can still test the research questions that were envisioned.

The m-learning project is slow to start. We have received IRB approval but we are still awaiting hardware and software. We have developed teaching learning methods, interview questions for the focus group work and we have developed a survey. I am currently writing a grant for external funding to support the follow up research to this project, which will connect students from the University of Tennessee, the University of Alabama, and Shenandoah University. Based on recommendations from a mentor at Duke University, we will also measure learning styles to determine how learning styles effect satisfcation and learning with handhelds.

The research team tested the collaborative tool Skype during the winter break. The application is remarkable. I was able to connect with a friend in Japan numerous times. Using the desktop version of Skype has advantages over the handheld version. It is easy to multitask while connecting using Skype. This is not the case with the handheld because it is difficult to type or write quickly. Also, the quality of the connection on the handheld is very good if using a headset with a microphone. Otherwise, the quality is poor. There appears to be minimal delay time even when connecting with Japan. Handhelds and the associated hardware have been ordered by ITC. IRB forms have been completed and are being reviewed at this time. The research team has created learning strategies that use the handheld and cooperative learning, a pretest posttest questionnaire to administer at the beginning and end of the semester, and an interview tool for the focus group.

The Cooperative learning and handheld project continues to evaluate applications for the handheld. We have discovered some hearty and robust medical applications that are availabale through the UT Preston Medical Library. These applications are large databases that store medial images, definitions and serve as decision support tools. We continue to use Sype as a peer-to-peer VoIP tool on our desktops. We have postponed using Skype on the handheld because the loaner PDAs do not handle the application well without requiring frequent soft resets.

The PDA team members (A Research Assistants and the PI) have met to receive assignments and software. The team will meet three times during November and we are using a SharePoint site as a collaboration tool to share discussion, articles, documents, information, and links. All members have received loaner PDAs and we are testing varoius free healthcare applications. We have developed an evaluation tool to record our observations about each tool that is tested. All members are loading Skype, the peer-to-peer VoIP application to test the application. At our next meeting, we will discuss ways to use multimedia (images, sound) to enhance case studies as the teaching strategy to promote cooperative learning.