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Background This study examined the influence that perceptions and stereotypes of the nursing role had on future career choice of rural secondary students. Objective The study was undertaken to identify a method of attracting final year secondary school students to an undergraduate nursing degree at a rural University. Design A mixed method study using a pre–post-interventional design. Setting The rural campus of an Australian university. Participants 71 secondary students attending a secondary school career development program at a rural Australian university. Method Semi structured questionnaires were used for data collection. The surveys were analysed using descriptive statistics and content analysis of open-ended survey questions. Results The research supports the importance of being aware of young people's impressions about nurses and nursing as a career, to ensure the successful implementation of targeted recruitment. Conclusion Targeted recruitment strategies can increase students' awareness of the wide variety of pathways within nursing, rather than leaving awareness to what family, friends or career advisers tell them, or how nurses are portrayed on television, movies and the media.

Background Flexible online programs are becoming increasingly popular method of education for students, allowing them to complete programs in their own time and cater for lifestyle differences. A mixture of delivery modes is one way which allows for enhanced learning. Peer learning is another method of learning which is shown to foster collaboration and prepare healthcare students for their future careers. This paper reports on a project to combine peer and online learning to teach pharmacology to nursing students. Objectives To explore undergraduate nursing student opinions of working in peer groups for online learning sessions in a pharmacology course. Design A qualitative study utilising a self-reported questionnaire. Setting A rural campus of an Australian university. Participants Second year nursing students enrolled in a Bachelor of Nursing Program. Methods A hard copy questionnaire was distributed to all students who attended the final semester lecture for the course. Content analysis of open-ended survey questions was used to identify themes in the written data. Results Of the 61 students enrolled in the nursing subject, 35 students chose to complete the survey (57%). Students reported a mixed view of the benefits and disadvantages of peer online learning. Sixty 6% (66%) of students liked peer online learning, whilst 29% disliked it and 6% were undecided. Convenience and ease of completion were reported as the most common reason to like peer online learning, whilst Information Technology issues, communication and non-preferred learning method were reasons for not liking peer online learning. Conclusion Peer online learning groups’ acted as one further method to facilitate student learning experiences. Blending peer online learning with traditional face-to-face learning increases the variety of learning methods available to students to enhance their overall learning experience.

Entrepreneurship is a novel course in the curriculum for students in the Information Technology (IT) degree program at La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia. In comparison to other IT-related courses, the Entrepreneurship course seeks to develop business management knowledge and skills; its learning design is thus different to that of other courses in the IT program. The concept of constructive alignment for curriculum renewal suggests that there are several components of good course design. In this paper, we use the principles of constructive alignment to analyze and redesign several components of the Entrepreneurship course. The focus is on reviewing and aligning the assessment tasks to ensure an effective evaluation and the achievement of student learning outcomes. Since assessment drives student learning, we describe the innovative assessment tasks that were implemented to enhance student learning, provide the rationale for the design of these tasks as supported by the current literature, and reflect on possible future improvements. The course redesign process and the constructive alignment and innovative assessment can be applied to other courses in the field, and more broadly to curriculum, teaching, and learning in higher education.

Summary Background Innovative curriculum designs are vital for effective learning in contemporary nursing education where traditional modes of delivery are not adequate to meet the learning needs of postgraduate students. This instance of postgraduate teaching in a distributed learning environment offered the opportunity to design a flexible learning model for teaching advanced clinical skills. Aim To present a sustainable model for flexible learning that enables specialist nurses to gain postgraduate qualifications without on-campus class attendance by teaching and assessing clinical health care skills in an authentic workplace setting. Methods An action research methodology was used to gather evidence and report on the process of curriculum development of a core unit, Comprehensive Health Assessment (CHA), within 13 different postgraduate speciality courses. Qualitative data was collected from 27 teaching academics, 21 clinical specialist staff, and 7 hospital managers via interviews, focus groups and journal reflections. Evaluations from the initial iteration of CHA from 36 students were obtained. Data was analyzed to develop and evaluate the curriculum design of CHA. Results The key factors indicated by participants in the curriculum design process were coordination and structuring of teaching and assessment; integration of content development; working with technologies, balancing specialities and core knowledge; and managing induction and expectations. Conclusions A set of recommendations emerged as a result of the action research process. These included: a constructive alignment approach to curriculum design; the production of a facilitator's guide that specifies expectations and unit information for academic and clinical education staff; an agreed template for content authors; and the inclusion of synchronous communication for real-time online tutoring. The highlight of the project was that it built curriculum design capabilities of clinicians and students which can sustain this alternative model of online learning.

This paper reports on the planning and implementation of an evaluation of the final prototype of a physical and computer based simulation in a postgraduate midwifery program. The evaluation framework was designed to reflect the pedagogy of Laurillard’s conversational framework, which had been used to structure the learning experiences in the simulation. Data collection methods and analysis highlighted the themes of discussion, interaction, reflection and adaptation of student learning actions as well as intrinsic feedback - all central to the conversational framework. An action learning approach to evaluation planning and implementation involving an external mentor is described in the following paper including the relationship to the conversational framework, the findings on the student learning environment and the student learning processes and outcomes. The lessons learned about evaluation are also elaborated.

To continually develop as a discipline, a profession needs to generate a knowledge base that can evolve from education and practice. Midwifery reflective practitioners have the potential to develop clinical expertise directed towards achieving desirable, safe and effective practice. Midwives are 'with woman', providing the family with supportive and helpful relationships as they share the deep and profound experiences of childbirth. To become skilled helpers students need to develop reflective skills and valid midwifery knowledge grounded in their personal experiences and practice. Midwife educators and practitioners can assist students and enhance their learning by expanding the scope of practice, encouraging self-assessment and the development of reflective and professional skills. This paper explores journal writing as a learning strategy for the development of reflective skills within midwifery and explores its value for midwifery education. It also examines, through the use of critical social theory and adult learning principles, how midwives can assist and thus enhance students learning through the development of professional and reflective skills for midwifery practice.

Focusing attention on models of teaching and learning during design and development phases can become the key to integrating evaluation in a teaching development project. This article reflects on an experience in planning and conducting an evaluation of a prototype of a new technology-based teaching initiative. The learning experiences designed as part of the prototype were explicitly built on a model of teaching and learning. This had implications for evaluation not recognised in many evaluation manuals. Aligning evaluation to a model of teaching and learning is revealed to be complex in the sense that an initial model needs to be interpreted and extended to include reference to underlying epistemological assumptions. Yet aligning evaluation with an extended model of teaching and learning simplifies and assists the process of evaluation including the choice of methods, analysis of the data and determining improvements. It directly links evaluation to design and development.

The current "crisis of legitimacy" affecting higher education in the United States is seen as a result of incompatible demands on the university by its internal versus external constituencies. From this perspective, information on the nature of student power sentiment is crucial input for understanding the current crisis, and particularly for understanding the role of university administrations, who find themselves at the intersection of conflicting pressures. Recent data from two state universities are brought to bear on this issue, confirming the basic incompatibility of student and "outside" forces for change, and the substantial but probably tenuous legitimacy afforded university administrations.