The overarching theme of the presentations in this symposium was the use of open learning. As acknowledged in Cronin’s presentation, there are multiple ways that open education can be described, “but openness is not a binary concept” (Cronin, 2017). That is, there is not just one way to conduct open education. Cormier’s presentation from 2017 and Morgan’s from 2020 stated that open learning may not be for everyone. Specific mention was made to the difficulties incorporating open learning in nursing do to confidentiality and privacy concerns (Cormier, 2017), (Morgan, 2020).
Healthcare education involves students in their clinical practicums caring for and performing diagnostic procedures on actual patients. The patient’s sensitive information is to be kept private and secure and is protected by privacy legislation. (Health Information Privacy in British Columbia Confidentiality-Overview, 2020)
Given the legal and ethical privacy requirements, is open leaning possible in healthcare education? The answer to my surprise, is yes and that I am already doing it. In viewing the presentation, “Openness beyond open resources” (Paskevicius, 2020), I realized that I was already using open education resources. The MERLOT collection was mentioned in the discussion portion of this presentation. Materials in the MERLOT collection are links to open education resources that are peer reviewed, and are therefore considered reliable (Peer Review Information and Process-merlot, 2020).
One of the materials from merlot.org is radioepedia.org. It is a collection of diagnostic images uploaded by users similar to how content is added to Wikipedia (Radiopaedia Terms of Use, 2020). Radiopaedia.org has a detailed terms of use agreement that ensures no patient information is shared. They also have a reporting system to report privacy violations and content that breaches requirements is removed (Radiopaedia Terms of Use, 2020). Images and case studies on radiopaedia.org can be shared under a modified creative commons license so long as the contributing user is credited, the use is non-commercial, and the material is not copyrighted (Radiopaedia Creative Commons Licence, 2020).
As Table 1 demonstrates, using radiopaedia.org to enhance course content allows me to use images to accompany written descriptions.
Table 1: Written description of a trimalleolar fracture with accompanying images from radiopaedia.org (Eisenberg & Jonhson, 2016),(Trimalleolar Fracture: Case contributed by Dr. Jeremy Jones, 2020)
Textbook description of Trimalleolar Fracture | Images from Radiopaedia demonstrating a Trimalleloar fracture | |
“Trimalleolar fractures involve the posterior lip of the tibia in addition to the medial and lateral malleoli and usually represent fracture dislocations” (Eisenberg & Jonhson, 2016) |
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Required citation as per radiopaedia.org terms of use: Case courtesy of Dr Jeremy Jones, <a href="https://radiopaedia.org/">Radiopaedia.org</a>. From the case <a href="https://radiopaedia.org/cases/14360">rID: 14360</a> |
Can open learning be used healthcare education? I learned from this symposium that the application of open learning is very situational. Open learning can be done, even in closed environments like health care so long as there is adherence to the legal and ethical requirements of privacy and confidentiality.
References
Cormier, D. (2017, April 18). Values of Open Core Values. Royal Roads University: http://ow.ly/GBE830cUgEJ
Cronin, C. (2017, April 20). Open culture, open education, open questions. Royal Roads University: http://ow.ly/L9ch30b2f41
Eisenberg, R. L., & Jonhson, N. M. (2016). Comprehensive Radiographic Pathology Sixth edition. St. Louis: Elsevier Mosby.
Health Information Privacy in British Columbia Confidentiality-Overview. (2020, April 19). Health Information Privacy in British Columbia: http://www.healthinfoprivacybc.ca/confidentiality/overview
merlot.org. (2020, April 19). https://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
Morgan, T. (2020, April 14). Open Ed Tech Infrastructure to get to Open Educational Practice. Royal Roads University: https://bit.ly/2XD4uBZ
Paskevicius, M. (2020, April 15). Openness beyond open resources. Royal Roads University: https://bit.ly/2z7p6byMALATVS
Peer Review Information and Process-merlot. (2020, April 19). info.merlot.org: http://info.merlot.org/merlothelp/topic.htm#t=MERLOT_Peer_Review_Information.htm
Radiopaedia Creative Commons Licence. (2020, April 19). Radiopadia.org: https://radiopaedia.org/licence
Trimalleolar Fracture: Case contributed by Dr. Jeremy Jones. (2020, April 18). Radiopaedia.org: https://radiopaedia.org/cases/trimalleolar-fracture-2?lang=us
Can open education practice be used in healthcare education? A Review of RRU MALAT Virtual Symposium 2020 by Shelley Dougan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Hi Shelley, I was excited to read the connections you are making between open education and the work you are doing in your context. Thank you for sharing some of the open resource examples that you find useful and I am looking forward to reading more of your contributions as you move throughout the program. Ciao,
Elizabeth