2014-02-21T00:00:00Z, Gröhbiel, Urs, Pimmer, Christoph

2014, Pimmer, Christoph, Linxen, Sebastian, Chipps, Jennifer, Brysiewicz, Petra, Gröhbiel, Urs, Walters, Fiona

This paper outlines the findings of a research project intended to facilitate the learning of health professionals across work-based and formal learning contexts by means of mobile technology. The focus of the educational approach was on the use of digital mobile media, and particularly mobile networking technologies to support social learning practices of professionals, i.e., nurses, in marginalized settings in rural South Africa. The overall project was informed by previous studies from marginalized contexts that pointed to the potential of mobile phones and mobile social networking technologies as a means to facilitate the learners engagement with explicit forms of educational content as well as to allow for their extended participation in professional, work-based communities (Kolko, Rose, & Johnson, 2007; Pimmer, Linxen, & Gröhbiel, 2012; Pimmer, Linxen, Gröhbiel, Jha, & Burg, 2013).

2013-11-01T00:00:00Z, Pimmer, Christoph, Mateescu, Magdalena, Zahn, Carmen, Genewein, Urs

Background: Despite the widespread use and advancements of mobile technology that facilitate rich communication modes, there is little evidence demonstrating the value of smartphones for effective interclinician communication and knowledge processes. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the effects of different synchronous smartphone-based modes of communication, such as (1) speech only, (2) speech and images, and (3) speech, images, and image annotation (guided noticing) on the recall and transfer of visually and verbally represented medical knowledge. Methods: The experiment was conducted from November 2011 to May 2012 at the University Hospital Basel (Switzerland) with 42 medical students in a masters program. All participants analyzed a standardized case (a patient with a subcapital fracture of the fifth metacarpal bone) based on a radiological image, photographs of the hand, and textual descriptions, and were asked to consult a remote surgical specialist via a smartphone. Participants were randomly assigned to 3 experimental conditions/groups. In group 1, the specialist provided verbal explanations (speech only). In group 2, the specialist provided verbal explanations and displayed the radiological image and the photographs to the participants (speech and images). In group 3, the specialist provided verbal explanations, displayed the radiological image and the photographs, and annotated the radiological image by drawing structures/angle elements (speech, images, and image annotation). To assess knowledge recall, participants were asked to write brief summaries of the case (verbally represented knowledge) after the consultation and to re-analyze the diagnostic images (visually represented knowledge). To assess knowledge transfer, participants analyzed a similar case without specialist support. Results: Data analysis by ANOVA found that participants in groups 2 and 3 (images used) evaluated the support provided by the specialist as significantly more positive than group 1, the speech-only group (group 1: mean 4.08, SD 0.90; group 2: mean 4.73, SD 0.59; group 3: mean 4.93, SD 0.25; F2,39=6.76, P=.003; partial 2=0.26, 1=.90). However, significant positive effects on the recall and transfer of visually represented medical knowledge were only observed when the smartphone-based communication involved the combination of speech, images, and image annotation (group 3). There were no significant positive effects on the recall and transfer of visually represented knowledge between group 1 (speech only) and group 2 (speech and images). No significant differences were observed between the groups regarding verbally represented medical knowledge. Conclusions: The results show (1) the value of annotation functions for digital and mobile technology for interclinician communication and medical informatics, and (2) the use of guided noticing (the integration of speech, images, and image annotation) leads to significantly improved knowledge gains for visually represented knowledge. This is particularly valuable in situations involving complex visual subject matters, typical in clinical practice.

2013-06-29T00:00:00Z, Pimmer, Christoph, Gröhbiel, Urs, Walters, Fiona, Linxen, Sebastian, Chipps, Jennifer

Background/rationale: Many mhealth and mlearning interventions fail, because they adopt a techno-centric view and ignore the local context. To address this, the present study investigated the 'organic' adoption and educational usage of mobile phones by health workers in rural health settings. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted interviewing nursing/advanced midwifery students, facilitators and nursing managers from rural, resource-constrained regions in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Content analysis used the concepts of Community of Inquiry theory as 'a priori-constructs'. Results: The research revealed a number of unexpected learning and teaching practices - based on the grass-root adoption of mobile phone functions and in particular social apps. These practices involved cognitive, teaching and social presence as well as reflective practice and enabled rich educational experiences - according to the Community of Inquiry Theory.

2014, Pimmer, Christoph, Pachler, Norbert, Ally, Mohamed, Tsinakos, Avgoustos

The use of mobile phones is attracting considerable interest in the fields of professional learning and work-based education. Surprisingly, there is relatively little systematic knowledge about how mobile devices can be used effectively for learning and competence development in work contexts. Many of the current approaches tend to repackage eLearning content in order to make it suitable for the smaller screens of mobile devices following behavioural and cognitive paradigms. By contrast, we attempt to illustrate in this chapter how mobile devices allow the realisation of rich pedagogical strategies. We use a number of educational parameters to characterise mobile learning (mLearning) as learning across different contexts that bridges and connects: 1) the creation and sharing of content; 2) learning for and learning at work; 3) individual and social forms of learning; 4) education across formal and informal settings, and (5) situated, socio-cognitive, cultural, multimodal and constructivist educational paradigms. We underpin our arguments with empirical studies from different fields and disciplines of work-based education. In so doing, we conclude that, in addition to sporadic, self-contained training, mobile devices can connect and span different situations and forms of learning and, accordingly, support learners across various contexts and phases of their career trajectories.

2014, Pimmer, Christoph, Brysiewicz, Petra, Walters, Fiona, Linxen, Sebastian

Background: With the proliferation of portable digital technology, mobile learning is becoming increasingly popular in nursing education and practice. Most of the research in this field has been concentrated on small-scale projects in high income countries. Very little is known about the ways in which nurses and midwives use mobile technology in remote and resource poor areas in informal learning contexts in low and middle income countries. Objectives: To address this gap, this study investigates whether nurses use mobile phones as effective educational tools in marginalized and remote areas, and if so, how and why. Setting and Methods: In rural South Africa, 16 nurses who attended an advanced midwifery education program, facilitators and clinical managers were interviewed about their use of digital mobile technology for learning. Techniques of qualitative content analysis were used to examine the data.

2013-10-09T00:00:00Z, Pimmer, Christoph

2014, Brysiewicz, Petra, Pimmer, Christoph, Chipps, Jennifer, Walters, Fiona, Linxen, Sebastian, Gröhbiel, Urs

2014, Pimmer, Christoph, Gröhbiel, Urs, Widmer, Christoph

Empowering Teachers as Designers of Learning Experiences Utilising Social-Mobile Technologies Workshop

2013-09-01T00:00:00Z, Pimmer, Christoph, Pachler, Norbert, Genewein, Urs

In medicine, knowledge is embodied and socially, temporally, spatially, and culturally distributed between actors and their environment. In addition, clinicians increasingly are using technology in their daily work to gain and share knowledge. Despite these characteristics, surprisingly few studies have incorporated the theory of distributed cognition (DCog), which emphasizes how cognition is distributed in a wider system in the form of multimodal representations (e.g., clinical images, speech, gazes, and gestures) between social actors (e.g., doctors and patients) in the physical environment (e.g., with technological instruments and computers). In this article, the authors provide an example of an interaction between medical actors. Using that example, they then introduce the important concepts of the DCog theory, identifying five characteristics of clinical representations-that they are interwoven, co-constructed, redundantly accessed, intersubjectively shared, and substantiated-and discuss their value for learning. By contrasting these DCog perspectives with studies from the field of medical education, the authors argue that researchers should focus future medical education scholarship on the ways in which medical actors use and connect speech, bodily movements (e.g., gestures), and the visual and haptic structures of their own bodies and of artifacts, such as technological instruments and computers, to construct complex, multimodal representations. They also argue that future scholarship should "zoom in" on detailed, moment-by-moment analysis and, at the same time, "zoom out" following the distribution of cognition through an overall system to develop a more integrated view of clinical workplace learning.