Student-Faculty-Community Flexible Learning Partnerships

Event Date & Time

Event Description

Healthcare delivery is moving into communities away from hospitals. Our mission at the School of Nursing is to use flexible learning strategies to optimize this shift from acute care management to community/population health promotion and well-being. In this presentation, we will discuss our strategies for engaging students and our community practice partners in flexible learning experiences throughout the undergraduate curriculum. One activity is linked to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) open school. Eleven of our students and three faculty members participated in a North American I-CAN project (Change Agent Network) to improve population health outcomes in our communities. We partnered with the Union Gospel Mission to identify, implement and evaluate healthcare improvement interventions for this special population. The I-CAN project included online learning modules, synchronous coaching calls and in-person project work at the Union Gospel Mission. In another flexible learning activity, student-faculty-community practice partners co-developed online learning resources to be used in the undergraduate curriculum and as educational resources in community settings (e.g., updates on the HPV vaccine). After providing an overview of our flexible learning innovations, we will discuss successes and challenges associated with designing, implementing and evaluating these collaborative projects. One powerful outcome that we are eager to share– we are shifting students’ focus from hospital settings to those places where we live.
Our Learning Objectives This session will:
1. Describe the planning, implementation and evaluation processes associated with community-based experiential student learning.
2. Discuss how to link community-based experiential learning to other course learning objectives and other curricular components (e.g., in-class discussions, skills lab simulations).
3. Examine the successes and challenges associated with flexible learning and student-faculty-community partnerships.

Facilitators:

Maura MacPhee, Associate Director of the Undergraduate Program, Lead on Flexible Learning Initiative in the School of Nursing

Khristine Carino, Project manager for Flexible Learning Initiative at the School of Nursing

Ranjit Dhari, Community/Population Health Nursing Faculty

Joanne Ricci, Community/Population Health Nursing Faculty