Using Computers to Support Health Sciences Student Consultations with FASD Experts

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Using Computers to Support Health Sciences
Student Consultations with FASD Experts

• Ruta Valaitis, School of Nursing, McMaster
  University
• Wendy Sword, School of Nursing, McMaster
  University
• Bob Jones, Visualization Design Institute,
  Sheridan College
• Andrea Hodges, Social and Public Health
  Services, McMaster University

Characteristics of PBL
Purpose

• to explore experiences and perceptions of health
  sciences students use of online computer
  conferencing for consultation with Fetal Alcohol
  Spectrum Disorder (FASD) experts

• A curriculum organized around problems that are
  relevant to desired learning outcomes, rather
  than organized by topics or disciplines.
• Conditions that facilitate small-group,
  self-directed learning, independent study,
  functional knowledge, critical thinking, life
  long learning, and self-evolution.
• (Rideout and Carpio, 2001)

Scenario
Student Groups

• Midwifery
• Nursing
• Neonatal Nurse Practitioners

• Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder
• Brigitte Boire
• Pregnancy
• Newborn infant
• Young child

Online Conference with Experts
Dialogue between Anna Guardian and a
student Student Any strategies that you have
developed as their caregiver that you have found
really helpful? Anna Guardian I have tried
many differnt stratigies , one for her
eatingproblems, one for her behavior , one for
sleeping . For her eating problems we have tried
giving her finger foods with different tectures ,
i would try to give her a little bit of something
new , but she wasnot ready to eat , she would
spit it uot after chewing it , i tried giving her
things she wanted to eat , like a sandwhich but
that did not work . I tried telling her that she
can have the same as granma but that did not work
. I tried peer pressure with her cousin who is 1
year younger , sometimes that worked and the next
time it didnot . she does eat better at school
than at home because of all the kids. she forgot
how to use her spoon and had to have large handle
spoon and be taught again. she is eating a little
better now but only when she wants to eat . I
make soft food for her because she does not have
to work as hard to eat . What i have found the
most helpfull with her is to make sure she is not
tired when i want her to eat ,because she will
refuse . sleeping has always been very hard
because fetal babies are very restless and hyper
. to get my grandaughter to sleep was always a
big strugle. i tried making the room very dark ,
that worked while she was younger . then she
started having nightmares , and would scream for
hours no matter what you did . then i tried music
to calm her . that worked for a while then the
nightmares started again . Her brother was
getting older and sleeping through the night . i
put his crib in with her now she is sleeping
again ,but i still have to play music .She will
often take hours to go to sleep at night, but she
still gets up at 6 in the morning . when she does
not sleep , we have a very bad morning untill
she goes to sleep . it is the same at the school
. she also will not go to sleep with out her
bottle ,we have tried several times to stop the
bottle , but the tantrums are so bad we have to
give in . the school called after an hour of her
screaming for her botltle , i had to take it to
her for her to settle down .we have quiet time
together before bed to get her calm enough to go
to sleep . i also try to stay to a routine as
much as possible ., which is a big help because
alcohal babies have problems with transitions . I
also tell her many times in advance to help her
with changesThe last 2 were the bigest help to me
. as you can see it is difficult to keep her
under controlwhen i thing stop working you try
another , and go back to things you tried before
bcause they may work again . the most important
thing is to be consistent and avoid a lot of
changes . they have problems with i change 2 is
almost impossible . Her temper tantrums were
realy bad when she was learning to walk and talk
and now she is starting to have them again . . .
.
Well just that it was a real person. It wasnt
a thing that was cleanly made and polished and
whatever. Its a real person reacting to your
question and reacting to their experience and
relating their experience to you.
Strengths Provided authentic learning
experience Felt confidence to write to
experts Experts invited dialogue Experts provided
detailed responses Experts were easy to access
online
It just gave me confidence that no matter what I
wrote or whatever question I wanted to ask that
it mattered and that I would get a response and
so it was a valuable part of the experience.
Limitations Information not always
relevant Responses sometimes disappointing Some
forgot about experts online or how to access
them
So in that way it was useful but I found that I
skimmed through a lot that I really wasnt
interested in or the question wasnt quite what I
was looking for, so I just sort of skimmed
through that. I was disappointed in a response
from one of the experts. The expert really
didn't answer my question and it took a week for
the expert to respond.
The expert also posted another message. I
dont know if you guys saw, and said I check my
e-mail every day and keep the questions coming, .
. . which was really good. Because you think you
dont want to kind of take up the experts time
really, but that was encouraging.
That expert posted like a huge response. Like
very, very detailed.
Conclusions Although some limitations exist,
online consultations with experts in the
community can be a valuable learning resource for
health sciences students.
Habits are hard to break. But in all honesty
there had been so many other things that sort of
happened in that first week or so that
remembering about those other resources just fell
off of the neurons. And I dont know whether I
just got habitulated to what that initial screen
looked like, and I dont know whether its even
identified under. What is it identified under?
Is it Resources or something? Is that the icon
that it is?
Like, we have people contacts but we rarely use
them. Just because we can post an e-mail to them
it was much easier to access those resources.