UW-Madison to lead expansion of online health care education

The threat of national nurse shortages and the growing promise of convenient online learning, especially for working-adult students, are continuing to change the way nurses are educated.

The UW–Madison School of Nursing is leading six nursing schools in a national project to take online education in health care to a higher level. The Nursing Education and Technology, or NEAT, project creates a nationwide team to identify common challenges in distance health care education and then to develop and test academic content “building blocks,” or learning objects, that can be shared among different courses, institutions and educational settings.

“The Internet and other educational options using technology are very appealing to people already in the workforce but interested in moving into health care or moving up in the health career they already have,” says Jeannette McDonald, the NEAT project director at the UW–Madison School of Nursing. “Most colleges already offer some form of Internet-based learning, but much of what’s available is offered as a traditional course of study, usually developed by one person or a small group. This national team is being asked to take the next step in the evolution of distance learning – developing smaller units of content that can be assembled into different formats, shared among institutions, and tailored for specific groups of students.”

McDonald says the group will focus on health disparities and patient safety, topics useful for several health professions. So, for example, the group might develop a case study that a student could use to learn how to incorporate a patient’s cultural beliefs about health care into decisions and follow-up treatment. That case study could then be shared among institutions and incorporated into different courses.

“This is the new frontier in distance learning,” notes McDonald. “It’s coming about for a number of reasons, particularly the need to educate many new health care professionals quickly and efficiently to meet demand. If we create ‘modules’ of learning that instructors around the country can plug into their courses, we have a much more efficient system of educating people in all the health care disciplines.”

The NEAT project is funded by a $485,000 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) of the U.S. Department of Education.

The other nursing schools taking part are Indiana University, the University of Detroit-Mercy, Arkansas State University, the University of North Dakota and the University of Kansas. The Association of Academic Health Centers is also a key partner.