There is growing interest in the use and application of Web 2.0 technologies to support education across the health professions. These technologies make it easier to reuse and remix content on the web hosted on social media sites such as YouTube Vimeo Slideshare and to share this with students via blogs wikis and social bookmarking. Other tools allow teachers to create their own learning content (eg screencasts and podcasts) whilst Google docs and educational apps support collaborative working. Students can use these tools to develop their own personal learning environments and learning networks and they also have a similar application for teaching staff in supporting their own life long learning. For many healthcare teachers based in the NHS however access to many of these tools is not possible from within the NHS. They are unable to take advantage of the opportunities they offer for collaboration with University-based colleagues and for innovation because access is blocked.
The NHS-HE Forum has set up a Connectivity Best Practice Working Group to look at these problems of accessing online learning and research applications and this presentation will provide an overview of some of the key issues the group is reviewing. Participants will have an opportunity to
- share their experiences of accessing Web 2.0 technologies and open content in NHS teaching settings
- consider and propose strategies that could address the perceived risks associated with accessing these sites/tools
- explore how we can overcome these obstacles and ensure that open educational resources and tools are accessible to NHS based teaching staff
- share examples of local good practice.
The outcomes of the discussion will be fedback to the NHS-HE working group and examples of best practice may be included in the group's final report which will include cases studies of good practice and propose a more co-ordinated national approach to supporting access to these technologies for educational use.
