Who Knows Best? An Investigation of the potential of student-generated content with Vocational Degree Courses through the creation of sharable e-Learning Resources

Students’ practical experience brings a unique and valuable perspective to the learning process within healthcare education. The production and sharing of student-generated content through tools such as wikis and blogs (1) is reshaping student involvement in contemporary higher education. For vocational courses in particular, students’ practice-related knowledge is a potentially rich learning resource. However, as much of this content is transient and informal, its true potential and distinctiveness is not fully evaluated. We seek to address this through the creation of more permanent e-learning resources in the form of learning objectives that can be stored, shared and evaluated. The study will involve students and staff of Intellectual Disability Nursing at University College Cork (UCC) and will build on a pilot collaboration with the UK’s Centre of Excellence for Reusable Learning Objects (RLO-CETL) which has championed a production methodology based firmly on a community of practice approach to e-learning development (2).The project will commence with ethical approval and recruitment of approximately 20 students to an initial concepts/storyboarding workshop. At least one design for sharing vocational expertise with other student groups will be selected to complete the full development process. Students will then have the opportunity to work closely with instructional designers and media developers to realise this learning resource. The completed learning objectives will be embedded into appropriate courses at UCC and evaluated. The pedagogical characteristics of learning resources produced will be analysed through a series of semi-structured interviews with the participating students and analysis of the materials produced. Evaluation of its learning effectiveness will be analysed through questionnaires and focus groups with the target learning groups. The resources will also be made available for reuse throughout Ireland and the UK and further impact analysis will follow.