Friday, February 10, 2012

Student midwives, clinical skills and cell phones

I have just spent the last two weeks teaching student midwives and I have noticed an interesting change in student behaviour compared to previous years. When we have looked at any clinical skills, including actual demonstration and practice of those skills, cell phones have appeared in seconds and at least half the class have been taking videos and photos. Yesterday I volunteered to be a model for sterile water injections (a method of treating back pain in labour) and it felt like I was being mobbed by the paparazzi.

When I asked a couple of students what they were going to do with the photos and videos, they replied that they were going to show them to friends ands family, to explain what they were studying in university. They hadn't really thought about sharing anything , especially the videos, online as a teaching/learning resource for others.

What I would like to do one day in a research project is track is how students use these images and videos, and then explore what happens when the students proactively produce and publish images and videos online as a teaching/learning resource.

Have you heard of any similar projects? Are you a students who takes photos and videos at university/college? What do you do with them and why? Are you a teacher? How do your students use their cell phones?

Image: 'Communication'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35707686@N06/3474643866

5 comments:

Kirsty said...

I have to say I don't think I've seen much of this.
Did any of them ask your permission to take a photo of you? I think they should be considering consent issues at this stage because that would be important when dealing with colleagues and clients on placements later on.
I do think some good quality online video resources could be very valuable teaching and learning aids though so would be interested to see how this is tracked.

A said...

Sterile water injections! I didn't think anyone in NZ was doing this! I practice in Auckland and can tell you no one up here has even heard of it, but I had it when I was in labour 14 years ago and have offered it to women here- thanks for the link/refresher!

and I also wondered about consent- your description made me feel very uncomfortable. I suppose it is not that different from recording lectures though. and I think you raise an interesting question- think how much we could collectively learn if we could all share and have access to this information!

Susan said...

Ive seen this alot Sarah and many of my nursing colleagues do not allow photo and video to be taken in lab setting because if it ends up on Facebook people seem to get all worked up about professional imageof the student nurse and, the university. I personally think that if it helps them learn, and of course there are no patients/women involved, what's the harm???

Sarah Stewart said...

@Kirsty yes, I did give permission...but as you say, this is a very important issue to address.

@A Good question about sterile water injections. I was using them back in the UK before I came out to New Zealand, back in the early 1990s...clearly they are swining back into favour in Australia, which is where I was teaching. As for NZ, I don't know what the practice is.

As for consent...yes I did give it. There was one video that a student filmed that is good quality and shows everything in detail so I suggested that she put it on YouTube. The only trouble is...it has me screaming my head off on it because I found it to be so painful :)

@Susan Totally agree with you. I do think students need to be advised to only post up stuff that is a reasonable quality. So as teachers, we should probably be teaching digital literacy and working with students to develop quality resources rather than putting out a blanket "no" to this sort of activity.

Dissertation said...

Ive seen this alot Sarah and many of my nursing colleagues do not allow photo and video to be taken in lab setting because if it ends up on Facebook people seem to get all worked up about professional imageof the student nurse and,