Session Information
02 SES 02 A, Digitalization I: Chances & Risks
Paper Session
Contribution
The project “CARO – Care Reflexion Online” investigates the conjunction of the “Digital Didactical Design”-Framework (DDD) by Jahnke (2015) with a curriculum that is based on an interactional didactical concept for nursing education. In the project, a software based classroom interaction system CARO has been developed. This software has been recently applied in an initial field testing phase, involving five trials with three nursing school classes, one university class and one advanced training class for leading health care professionals. This work describes the first findings of the ongoing evaluation of the field tests. It can be shown, that the integration of CARO into live teaching contexts results in successful activation of learners across action spaces within exemplary lessons in nursing education. Based on the results of this research phase more specific follow-up research questions on the effects of Digital Cross Action Spaces in applied interactional nursing education have been developed and will be discussed.
The “Digital Didactical Design-” (DDD)-Framework based on Jahnke (2015) consists of five design elements: (1) clear and visible teaching goals and intended learning outcomes; (2) deep learning activities focused on producing in engaged, authentic, and open settings; (3) process-based assessment; (4) multiple roles of social relations; (5) digital multimodal technologies used for cross-actions (Jahnke 2015). “Cross Action” refers to cross-media multimodal activities, such as writing texts, creating image- and video-content, collaboratively create and hold presentations or information inquiry using various digital media and tools. The framework has been successfully applied as research framework to investigate the integration of web-based technologies in the classroom (Jahnke et al., 2017). To support both the DDD-framework and interactional nursing education, CARO implements aspects of learning content management systems (creating and presenting learning contents), classroom management systems (organizing, structuring and controlling the process of live teaching), classroom response system (stimulating and collecting students’ responses), as well as a curriculum planning system and an educational resource repository.
The subject-specific part of the CARO project consists of three learning modules based on the Interactional Didactic Model (Darmann-Finck, 2010). "Key problems" (Klafki 1993), conflicts and dilemmata of vocational reality have been identified with surveys. CARO learning modules start with situation-based cases e.g. in terms of video or other multimedia sources. In our study, the cases represent the topics “dealing with dementia”, “non-violent act and involuntary commitment” and “transcultural nursing”. Based on Habermas’ concept of cognitive interests (Habermas 1968/1973), the modules are constructed in regard to three didactical goals: problem-solving competences and rule-guided practical skills; personal and social competences; critical reflection of interrelations.
In the classroom, learners are expected to synthesize a variety of possible problem solutions in contradictory nursing situations. To support this, the CARO classroom interaction system has been developed. In CARO, the teacher is able to a) plan and distribute tasks, material and media content, b) supervise and orchestrate the students’process of working on problems and questions, c) collect responses, d) arrange or visualize collected responses for further discussion and e) present, discuss and persist (save) these arrangements. Students receive the material, tasks or links to online resources on their own mobile phones in real-time during the lesson and can freely act within the provided space of actions. Material is additionally presented for a task and can be displayed at the choice of the students. A discussion of the results can be enhanced by visualizing responses, e.g. wrapping up numerical inputs into a chart or clustering words from a text input for “tagging” a certain context.
Method
Design Based Research (DBR) (Koppel 20016; Reeves 2006) has been selected as a compatible methodology for continuously develop and evaluate the software and the curriculum material. A central part of one evaluation cycle consists of a set of field trials, where the software (in a fixed alpha release state) is introduced into a formal setting of a lesson. The proximity to a real world scenario allows to evaluate various facets of the didactics and the software from a rich perspective of collectible data. With a focus on evaluating digital cross action spaces, the following factors were of special interest: 1. active contribution to the lesson, 2. intensive dealing with the content and 3. motivation to work on given exercises. To evaluate these factors (among others) the following trial setup has been established: The participating course was encouraged to implement an exemplary learning unit from the CARO curriculum. There were no pre-lesson modifications by the teacher. The given learning unit spanned at least across two lessons. The teacher have been profoundly introduced to the functionality of the software. All participating students have never seen or used the CARO application before. Students were required to bring their own mobile digital device such as notebooks, tablets or smartphone to use the CARO application (Bring Your Own Device). As fallback in cases of connection issues or missing devices a set of tablets has been provided. The lessons were executed by the teacher using the CARO teacher environment, which also included the presentation of media content, distribute tasks, process tasks, collect responses, present responses and collectively reflect the responses. A support team of the CARO research group has passively attended the lessons to take notes on observations and to give support in cases of technical issues. At the end of the trial a link to an online questionnaire has been shared with the students and they were encouraged to volunteer. Respondents were asked closed questions about their digital media equipment and usage, the digital learning experience during the lessons in comparison to analogue lessons as well as the usability of the software. Both closed and open questions were used. The data has been analyzed using exploratory data analysis methods. The teachers were also interviewed about their in-depth experience of executing a learning unit on a full digital scale, which were summarized with qualitative content analysis methods.
Expected Outcomes
After three software trials at nursing schools and two others at the university and in further education, the overall results indicate a slight positive trend in perceived activation, deeper content exposition and motivation. Some of the free text responses also indicated a perceived higher activation in the lesson, where “literally everybody is involved”. However, it should also be underlined the fact, that teacher were able to monitor the activity of the students and it is yet unknown how strong this effect is on activation and deeper content exposition. And as always new technologies – especially in this case, where students were allowed to use their smartphones – tend to create some short-lived spike in interest. Future research should therefore focus on a setup with classes over a longer period, for instance by implementing a complete learning module over a period of a full school year and also take the above mentioned factors into account. Furthermore, it should be highlighted that learners of one trial responded especially high on activation compared to the other trials. In this trial, the teacher not only spent more time to learn the software, but was also the only teacher, who made extensive use of the classroom’s whiteboard and actively switched between analogue and digital methods. This raises the follow-up question, whether this effect has been caused by the more active teacher or the more cross-medial situation or other factors. It should also be emphasized here, that the interactional didactics approach require a high commitment from all students. Future work could focus on the relation of the subject related didactic and the software and for instance compare the teaching of the Interactional Didactic Model with a classic didactical approach, where both are taught in class using the CARO classroom management system.
References
Darmann-Finck, I. (2010): Interaktion im Pflegeunterricht. Frankfurt a. M.: Lang. Habermas, J. (1968/1973): Erkenntnis und Interesse. Mit einem Nachwort von 1973. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Jahnke, I. (2015). Digital Didactical Designs: Teaching in CrossActionSpaces. Routledge: Abingdon-on-Thames. Jahnke, I. et al. (2017). Digital Didactical Designs as research framework: iPad integration in Nordic schools. Computers & Education, 113, 1 – 15. Jeong, H.; Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2016). Seven Affordances of Computer-Supported-Collaborative Learning: How to Support Collaborative Learning? How Can Technologies Help? Educational Psychologist, 51(2), 247–265. Klafki, W. (1993): Neue Studien zur Bildungstheorie und Didaktik. 3. Aufl., Weinheim, Basel: Beltz. Koppel, I. (2016): "Entwicklung einer Online-Diagnostik für die Alphabetisierung. Eine Design-Based Research Studie", Wiesbaden Reeves, T. (2006). Design Research from a technology perpective. In J. V. den Akker, K. Gravemeijer, S. McKenney, & N. Nieveen (Hrsg.), Educational Design Research, 86–109.
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