{"id":188,"date":"2018-07-20T21:46:57","date_gmt":"2018-07-21T04:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0066\/?p=188"},"modified":"2018-07-20T22:05:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-21T05:05:05","slug":"malat-2018-virtual-symposium-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0066\/malat-2018-virtual-symposium-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"MALAT 2018 Virtual Symposium reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My perspective at this symposium…<\/p><\/div>\n

As learners entering into RRU’s Master of Arts in Learning and Technology program, we were tasked with reviewing eight presentations from a virtual symposium that happened earlier this April. The talks I reviewed were packed with information that was entirely new to me.\u00a0It appears that, w<\/span><\/span>hile\u00a0<\/span><\/span>K-12 and higher\u00a0<\/span><\/span>education programs are experiencing growth in the concept of ‘open learning’, healthcare seems to be taking a more cautious position.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0The most exciting educational tool in healthcare in the last few years has been medical simulation training and debriefing. Eppich and Cheng (2015) found that health care educators “… recognized the essential role of\u00a0debriefing<\/span>\u00a0in simulation learning contexts\u00a0to help transform experience into learning through reflection.” (p. 106). While open educational resources (OER) are becoming common<\/a>\u00a0in healthcare news (Groen, 2012), the idea of open, networked learning has not yet taken root.\u00a0There is<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>much to learn from the progress of open learning in education\u00a0<\/span><\/span>and the use of openness as a “vehicle for change”<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>(Childs, 201<\/span><\/span>8<\/span><\/span>)<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0It is my hope that some of the lessons from social sciences and education can be transferred\u00a0 and used to design safe, open spaces for learning in the field of healthcare.<\/p>\n

Dave Cormier’s presentation<\/a> from the 2017 symposium was very enlightening and he adequately conveyed the progression of the concept of ‘open’ within education moving from ‘open access’ to ‘open source’ to ‘open content’ (Cormier, 2017). His expansion on the concept of ‘Rhizomatic’ networked learning, where the community becomes the curriculum, was fascinating. I was excited to potentially brainstorm on how the networked minds of experienced healthcare educators could use this concept to instil motivation, passion and creative new ideas in our field.<\/p>\n

I was thrilled to learn more about multi-platform sharing of data, software, and knowledge for free.\u00a0 I contemplate that there may be benefits for faculty\/clinical site educator community discussions and reflections through open learning. I also see potential benefit of tech-based, networked learning on the development of public ‘eHealth literacy’ – defined in Neter and Brainin’s work (2012) as “…the ability of people to use emerging information and communications technologies to improve or enable health and health care.” (p.1). Yet, more questions must be asked before we can forge ahead.<\/p>\n