Using Student Facilitation and Interactive Tools Within and Beyond the LMS

While dialogue remains a critical component to an online community of inquiry (CoI), challenges regarding engaged student participation persist. This chapter discusses an online graduate course, “Designing Learning Within Course Management Systems” (“Designing Learning”), in which student-student interaction is a key feature and a central component of nearly all of the student activities. This chapter highlights the core pedagogical concepts and theories, including CoI, that form the foundation for the “Designing Learning” course. It then demonstrates the integration of those concepts throughout course design elements, including student facilitation and the use of multiple platforms like VoiceThread and Google Docs for interaction including reflections on both the students' and instructors' experiences of this course. Recommendations are next provided so that the successes of this course can be applied to other online teaching and learning contexts. Lastly, further research directions are identified.

Pharmacy Student Facilitation of Reporting of Adverse Drug Reactions in a Hospital

<p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p><strong>Background:</strong> Health Canada relies on health professionals to voluntarily report adverse reactions to the Canada Vigilance Program. Current rates of reporting adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are inadequate to detect important safety issues.</p><p><strong>Objective:</strong> To assess the impact of pharmacy student facilitation of ADR reporting by pharmacists at a tertiary care teaching hospital in Canada. Methods: The intervention of interest, implemented at one campus of the hospital, was facilitation of ADR reporting by pharmacy students. The students received training on how to submit ADR reports and presented information sessions on the topic to hospital pharmacists; the pharmacists were then encouraged to report ADRs to a designated student for formal reporting. Frequency of reporting by pharmacists at the intervention campus was compared with reporting at a control campus of the same hospital. Data were collected prospectively over a 6-month pilot period, starting in April 2015.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> During the pilot period, 27 ADR reports were submitted at the intervention campus, and 3 reports at the control campus. All student participants strongly agreed that they would recommend that responsibility for submitting ADR reports to the Canada Vigilance Program remain with pharmacy students during future rotations.</p><p><strong>Conclusions:</strong> Availability of a pharmacy student to facilitate reporting of ADRs may increase the frequency of ADR reporting and could alleviate pharmacist workload; this activity is also a potentially valuable learning experience for students.</p><p><strong>RÉSUMÉ</strong></p><p><strong>Contexte :</strong> Santé Canada compte sur les professionnels de la santé pour signaler sur une base volontaire les réactions indésirables au programme Canada Vigilance. Les taux actuels de déclaration des réactions indésirables aux médicaments (RIM) ne permettent pas de repérer les problèmes de sécurité importants.</p><p><strong>Objectif :</strong> Évaluer l’effet d’une intervention permettant aux étudiants en pharmacie de faciliter la déclaration des RIM par les pharmaciens dans un hôpital universitaire de soins tertiaires au Canada.</p><p><strong>Méthodes :</strong> L’intervention en question, mise en place dans l’un des établissements de l’hôpital, se résumait à permettre aux étudiants en pharmacie de faciliter la déclaration de RIM. Les étudiants étaient formés pour soumettre des déclarations de RIM et ont présenté des séances d’information sur le sujet aux pharmaciens d’hôpitaux; ces derniers étaient ensuite encouragés à signaler les RIM à un étudiant désigné qui procédait alors à une déclaration formelle. La fréquence de déclaration par les pharmaciens à l’établissement où l’intervention était mise en place a été comparée à celle d’un établissement témoin du même hôpital. Les données ont été recueillies de façon prospective sur une période de six mois pour l’étude pilote qui a commencé en avril 2015.</p><p><strong>Résultats :</strong> Pendant l’étude pilote, on a procédé à 27 déclarations de RIM à l’établissement où a eu place l’intervention alors que, dans l’établissement témoin, on en a signalé que trois. L’ensemble des étudiants ayant participé étaient tout à fait d’accord pour que la responsabilité de produire des déclarations de RIM au programme Canada Vigilance demeure une tâche pour les étudiants en pharmacie au cours de stages futurs.</p><p><strong>Conclusions :</strong> La mise à contribution d’un étudiant en pharmacie pourrait accroître la fréquence de déclaration des RIM et pourrait réduire la charge de travail du pharmacien. De plus, cette tâche peut représenter une expérience d’apprentissage précieuse pour les étudiants.</p>

Student-to-Student Communication in Online Graduate-Level Education Courses

In 2014, nearly one million graduate students were enrolled in online courses (Allen & Seaman, 2016), with many of the courses requiring discussions that contributed to students' overall course grades. In this chapter, the author discusses student-to-student communication in online graduate level education courses. Specifically, the author reviews literature salient to online discussions and utilizes original research from three courses in the Spring 2015 term taught by the author to discuss effective practices to increase student-to-student communication. These techniques include creating social presence, establishing discussion criteria, establishing the number of posts, utilizing self-assessment to assist students in creating posts, and student facilitation of discourse.

14. By Students, For Students: Adapting Inquiry-Based Learning for Undergraduate Human Anatomy Education in a Large Class Setting

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a well-documented educational paradigm that has been adopted for the teaching of various subjects. In the interest of finding novel methods of teaching a traditionally lecture-based subject, IBL was adopted into an undergraduate human anatomy course in 2009 as a project called Inquiry 216. This project allows students to engage in a group-oriented and open-ended research project culminating in a free-format presentation. Since its inception, Inquiry 216 has undergone multiple revisions in methodology, with particular attention paid to formalizing the role of student facilitation, encouraging graduates of Inquiry 216 to become facilitators, and the evaluation and subsequent improvement of IBL in the context of Inquiry 216. A chronological account of conception, issue identification, objective and subjective evaluation and improvement of Inquiry 216 to its present model is illustrated, along with a specific emphasis on the benefits of student-based facilitation. We suggest that successful development, evaluation and improvement of IBL as a parallel to didactic education can further enhance students’ potential and enthusiasm for learning across various subjects.

Structuring asynchronous online discussion groups : the impact of role-supported student facilitation

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] The purpose of the current study was to explore the effectiveness of a role-supported, student-facilitation strategy on online discussions from multiple dimensions: participation, interaction, levels of knowledge construction and cognition, as well as the impact of each role. All 13 graduate students who enrolled in a master's-level online course participated in this study. First, an unfacilitated discussion was implemented, followed by three student-facilitated discussions, in which four volunteers were assigned different facilitator roles (Devil?s advocate, Questioner, Information provider, and Summarizer). At the end of the class, 10 out of 13 students completed an online survey about their experience in the student-facilitated online discussions. Transcripts of the four online discussions were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, social network analysis, content analysis, sequential analysis, and qualitative analysis. Results indicated that student-facilitated and unfacilitated online discussions were similar in respect to participation, but student-facilitated discussions demonstrated significantly improved interaction patterns and levels of knowledge construction and different levels of cognition. The Devil?s Advocate role had a positive impact and the Summarizer?s role had limited effects on levels of knowledge construction. None of the four roles consistently demonstrated a positive impact on participants? cognitive levels. Responses to the survey showed that the student-facilitation strategy was valuable in both group and individual levels.