Part C updates

New book chapter on stimulation in a practicum course in nursing

Odd Rune Stalheim, INN
Professor Yngve Nordkvelle, INN

Odd Rune Stalheim and Yngve Nordkvelle published a chapter in the book “Self-Efficacy in Instructional Technology Contexts”. The chapter is titled “I Saved the Patient: Simulation and Self-Efficacy in Health Education“. In the chapter, they explore how technical innovations change how nurses are trained in practice.

Abstract: Historically, nurses’ training has been based on a traditional apprentice model, with most of the practice performed in real-life situations. Technological innovations have changed the way that nurses are trained in practice, in response to the continuing improvement and complex reality of nursing. In this case, simulations in designated technological laboratories for nursing education have the advantage of preparing students for real-life experiences and assist them in translating theory into action in safe and secure conditions. Simulation is a context for teaching and learning, with its huge potential for offering students affective, cognitive, and psychomotor challenges in learning. Practicing beforehand leaves more time and opportunities for students to concentrate on what is otherwise only possible to learn in complex and realistic situations. High-fidelity health simulations in safe environments offer students unique opportunities to practice skills and build self-efficacy while circumventing the possibility of human injury or distress. Additionally, student responses and satisfaction with simulation activities are reported to be very high in nursing education.

View the book here. 

New publication on feedback in higher education

Rachelle Esterhazy, UiO

Rachelle Esterhazy has published a new article on disciplinary practices and their relational dynamics in feedback practices, in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. View the article here.

Abstract: 

Most research on feedback has paid limited attention to the role of disciplines and their relational dynamics. This article addresses this limitation by offering a conceptualisation of feedback as a relational process that emerges through feedback encounters shaped by the educational and professional practices of the discipline. Using data from a qualitative case study of an undergraduate software engineering course unit, it explores the relational dynamics between different elements of the course and how these dynamics matter for the emergence of productive feedback encounters. The findings show that a wide range of productive feedback encounters occurred between students and both human and material sources throughout the course. Feedback encounters were productive when students had the opportunity to navigate the tools and conventions necessary to participate in the educational practices of the course and, by extension, the discipline’s professional practices. Different learning activities were characterised by distinctive relational dynamics that provided various opportunities and constraints for productive feedback encounters to emerge. The findings demonstrate the importance of accounting for disciplinary practices and their relational aspects when designing for learning activities that aim to enable students to productively seek out and engage with feedback.

Full reference: Esterhazy, R. (2018) What matters for productive feedback? Disciplinary practices and their relational dynamics, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(8), 1302-1314

Upcoming special issue at UNIPED

Following the symposium at the NERA conference, project researchers are also working with a special issue at UNIPED.

Associate Professor Thomas de Lange, UiO
Associate Professor Crina Damsa, UiO

Crina Damsa & Thomas de Lange, the guest editors of the special issue, describe it as:

“This special issue explores how various forms of student centered approaches have been implemented in higher education courses and programs. Its main aim is to examine and understand the way teaching methods and various forms of activity are employed to activate students and to achieve quality in the teaching and learning processes. In addition, the special issue addresses aspects of organization and leadership of study programmes in relation to the teaching and learning processes.

Implications for the educational practices will be identified following from the analysis of empirical cases from Norway and Finland. The articles and the commentaries cover a wide spectrum of disciplinary contexts, institutional contexts and levels of education and intend to identify and problematize aspects that might foster or stand in the way of achieving quality in teaching and learning. The contributions take a departure point in empirical data and engage with different research methodologies.

Overall, the ambition of this special issue is to provide a nuanced and research-based view on quality work in practice and inspire innovative efforts in the future.”

The contributions in the special issue will be both in Norwegian and English.

 

Results from the project presented at the NERA conference in Oslo

The 46th Nordic Educational Research Association (NERA) conference was held  8-10 March in Oslo. Researchers from the project presented seven papers from the project in a two-session symposium Friday afternoon, organised by Crina Damsa and Thomas de Lange (View the conference programme here):

  • Portfolio assessment in biology: from design to implementation by Rachelle Esterhazy
  • Simulation in nursing- Enhancing quality through technological training environments by Odd Rune Stalheim & Yngve Nordkvelle
  • Participant or observer in an online MBA? by Trine Fossland & Cathrine E. Tømte
  • Exploring how law students’ regulation of learning is related their experiences of the teaching-learning environment by Heidi Hyytinen & Anne Haarala-Muhonen
  • Study program leadership: a matter of organization? by Bjørn Stensaker, Mari Elken, Peter Maassen
  • Elements of study program plans – organising for alignment? by Tine S. Prøitz
  • Exploring plenary sessions and their potentialities for student learning by Anne Line Wittek, Thomas de Lange, Monika Bærøe Nerland & Trine Fossland

The sessions were commented by Monika Nerland (UiO) and  Eva Forsberg (Uppsala University).

Odd Rune Stalheim & Yngve Nordkvelle presenting the case on simulation.

 

Professor Monika Nerland, UiO

Note also that Monika Nerland will be one of the keynote speakers at the conference. Her talk is titled: “Contemporary knowledge dynamics and shifting demands to professional expertise”. In the talk, she employs perspectives from social studies of science and professions to discuss how the knowledge dynamics that serve professional expertise are getting more complex, comprising a range of knowledge-producing actors and interests which generate tensions in educational contexts.

Report on student centered approaches in higher education launched

This morning, the report on student centred approaches in higher education was launched at a breakfast seminar. Monika Nerland (IPED/UiO) and Tine Prøitz (NIFU) presented the key results in the report. This was followed by a panel discussion with Oddrun Samdal (UiB), Ida Austgulen (NSO), Stein Erik Lid (NOKUT) og Gunn Engelsrud (NIH).

The report presents results from 8 course level case studies that employ various student centered approaches. All of the chapters present specific lessons learned, and the final chapter concludes with a number of dilemmas for using student-centered approaches.

The report includes chapters on: 

  • Introduction by Monika Nerland and Tine S. Prøitz
  • Project-based learning in Computer Engineering Education by Crina Damşa
  • Portfolio assessment in an undergraduate course in ecology by Rachelle Esterhazy
  • Group assignments and roleplay in Organisation and Management by Line Wittek & Monika Nerland
  • Simulation in a practicum course in nursing by Yngve Nordkvelle & Odd Rune Stalheim
  • Bringing work-related elements into teaching and learning of legal education by Trine Fossland & Thomas de Lange
  • Online teaching and learning in an experience-based MBA programme by Trine Fossland & Cathrine Tømte 
  • Problem-based learning in a field course in ecology research by Heidi Hyytinen
  • Large class lectures and essay writing in legal education by Heidi Hyytinen & Anne Haarala-Muhonen
  • Quality of educational practices: Lessons learned and recommendations for the future by Monika Nerland, Tine S. Prøitz, Crina Damsa, Thomas de Lange, Rachelle Esterhazy, Trine
    Fossland, Heidi Hyytinen, Yngve Nordkvelle, Odd Rune Stalheim, Cathrine Tømte, Line Wittek

Download the report here.