Overview

As a group, we’ve decided to that for our final interactive learning design, we will be tackling the topic of Electronic Health Records (EHR’s).  EHR’s are longitudinal records of a patient’s medical history, diagnosis’, prescriptions, imaging, etc, that are linked with clinics, hospitals, and various other health facilities (Gagnon et al., p. 2, 2009).  They are important because they allow continuity of care to be maintained across multiple healthcare environments, offering seamless transitions from clinic to hospital to pharmacy.  The instructional approach that I will be analyzing is Open Pedagogies.  I’ll review literature to find it’s characteristics, applications, and ultimately verify whether it aligns with our topic, and if there’s a place for it in our final learning design.

Approach Characteristics

Pedagogy, according to google’s dictionary definition, describes “the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept”.  Along this line, an open pedagogy is the method or practice of teaching in an open manner, presumably free of cost and available to everyone.  This ties in very closely with Open Educational Resources (OER’s), which provide the means and tools to be taught, but leave the teaching to either the person viewing the resource, where often that individual is responsible both for the role of teacher and student in their learning.  Open Pedagogy, by its free nature, very often takes advantage of these OER’s

Pedagogical approaches are split into four main categories, according to Tes Editorial:

  1. Behaviorism:  is based primarily on the theory of behaviorism. The teacher is at the center of learning, leading, and decision making.
    • Teacher centered
    • Uses direct Instruction
    • learning is lecture based
  2. Constructivism: is based primarily on the theory of constructivism.  Centers around the learner, and is more experientially based.
    • Student centered
    • Project work
    • Learning based on inquiry
  3. Social constructivism: is a fusion of the previous two approach characteristics.  It includes student leading and teacher leading themes.
    • collaborative student-teacher process
  4. Liberationism: is focused on full provision for students, where the students voice is prioritized, and the classroom experiences a form of democracy.
    • Teacher is a learner
    • Class discover together

(Parker et al., 2020)

Open Pedagogy can then also be described using eight attributes, according to Hegarty:

  1. Participatory technologies
  2. People, openness, trust
  3. Innovation & creativity
  4. Sharing ideas & resources
  5. Connected community
  6. Learner generated
  7. Reflective practice
  8. Peer review

In order for an Open Pedagogy to be successful, it must incorporate elements from each attribute (Hegarty, p. 5, 2015).

Alignment with our chosen topic

The Open pedagogy model aligns quite well with our chosen topic, and our method of dissemination, as we will not be charging for the educational resource, and it will be openly available, once completed.  With regards to which of the four approaches we will use, there is a high likelihood of the constructivism approach best fitting our needs.  We will not be forming lectures, instead the resource will be a self-guided set of readings, slides, and animations.  At various levels along the way there will be questionnaires, but these are simply for the learner to test their own knowledge, and everything will be at the learners pace.

The behaviorism approach is too rigid for the resources and topic we have in mind, so it does not align well at all.  Additionally, we wish to allow our resource to be accessed by a large number of users at any given time, so direct instruction or leading of any resulting lesson would not work.

The social constructivism approach is more in line, and we may consider having enforced time limits for the quizzes, or making their accurate completion necessary to succeed in the resource, a feature that would lean more towards this approach.  However, at this point that is less likely.  It is still a viable approach, but not as high as that of simple constructivism.

Liberationism, despite being an interesting idea, is also outside the realm of our ability.  Too many significant changes would need to be made to our resource, as well as our direct involvement in every lesson, both of which are unfeasible.

Regarding the attributes, our plan is to incorporate participatory technologies, specifically teaching about them, and using them for learning exercises.  The second, third and fourth also clearly align with our topic of EHRs, as we are trying to increase knowledge of the need for such technology, and understanding of how it works to spark innovation and change in our health sector.  This in turn will help to connect people through a shared knowledge and understanding.  We are planning on incorporating a simple web-based game that would include learner generated scenarios, incorporating attribute six.  reflective practice and peer review are slightly more challenging, but we hope to expose our resource to a number of our peers before applying it, in the hopes that they can suggest improvements and changes that we may have overlooked.

Place in Final Interactive Learning Design

There is a very high likelihood that the Open Pedagogical approach is either the main approach, or one of the approaches to be used in designing our educational resource.  More specifically, using a constructivist approach.  We strive to touch on each of the Open Pedagogy attributes as well, as most of them seem pertinent to our chosen topic, and will most likely increase the quality of our product.

References

Gagnon, M.-P., Shaw, N., Sicotte, C., Mathieu, L., Leduc, Y., Duplantie, J., Maclean, J., & Légaré, F. (2009). Users’ perspectives of barriers and facilitators to implementing EHR in Canada: A study protocol. Implementation Science, 4, 1–8. https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/10.1186/1748-5908-4-20

Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of Open Pedagogy: A Model for Using Open Educational Resources. Educational Technology,55(4), 3-13. Retrieved May 26, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/44430383

Parker, Kate, et al. “What Is Pedagogy?” Tes, 26 Feb. 2020, www.tes.com/news/what-is-pedagogy-definition.