21.04.2021
This conference presentation shows a contextual study to identify general design characteristics as well as components of a digital learning ecosystem [@hecht2019ule] for nursing profession education. In concentrating on an introductory contextual study as the beginning of the design process, the present study identifies relevant aspects of educational practices concerning the education of nurses. These aspects become relevant for pedagogical engaged design decisions with regard to digital learning ecosystems [@friesen2004los; @laanpere2014pdd]. The major teaching practice to be investigated by this conceptual study are use cases of worksheets. Assuming that vocational nursing education mostly relies on traditional and non-digital teaching practices, worksheets represent instructional documents aiming a self-directed learning and therefore are interesting for digital learning environments. In shaping digital worksheet teaching practices as an incemental innovation of traditional worksheet teaching practices, we also aim at designing digital learning infrstructure as ecosystems in formal vocational and informal workplace learning.
The mixed method approach combines a qualitative and quantitative analyses of 119 worksheet use cases in vocational nursing schools during the pandemic situation in Germany. It covers practices of creation and editing of worksheets by teachers as well as their actual layout, distribution, use and follow-ups. Regarding the results, this study identifies four major areas of design decisions in order to shape a digital learning ecosystem. Drawing on the investigated teaching practices, the study proposes pedagogical engaged improvements for each major area, that might be addresses by educational technology. These areas comprise: a) improving collaborative editing of educational media by a digital community of sharing teachers, b) improving digital distribution and use of educational media as self-directed learning embedded in an enriched and transparent context of learning processes and c) enable teachers to reveal and discuss the lack of addressing central concepts of nursing and d) improving learners reflection and discussion of self-directed learning with educational media by digital communication tools.
Together with Roland Brühe (rbruehe on Twitter) and Daniela Thomas we are looking forward to our presentation at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in September 2021. Meet us at network 2: Vocational Education and Training (VETNET).