Review Article
Barry Matthews
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 13, Issue 4, Article No: ep317
ABSTRACT
Introduction: To meet the ambition of the UK becoming the global leader in health technology, the future workforce needs to have a developed digital literacy. The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the move to online learning has also increased the requirement for a reinvention of traditional teaching methodologies (Sá & Serpa, 2020).
Methodology: A systematic review was conducted using a mix of Boolean search terms in twelve education and health journal databases to discover the extent of current international research of digital literacy in health programmes. Papers were selected for their specificity to digital literacy in health education pre-registration professional programmes.
Results: The initial search included 5359 papers, 3925 after duplicates removed, 134 remained after title review which were then input into Covidence for full reading, finally 47 papers being included for thematic analysis. This thematic analysis identified a number of key themes within these papers: digital literacy of the educator, digital literate workforce, technical skills limit adoption, information literacy, a curriculum requirement in education, institutional infrastructure or personal access, preparedness for entering academia, concerns over the use of digital skills, personalised digital literacy experience, increased communication skills with digital literacies, competency frameworks, COVID-19 and social media in education.
Conclusion: This research identifies areas of good practice and areas that need to be considered in higher education programmes and by academics to ensure the digital literacy of the future healthcare workforce.
Keywords: health education, digital literacy, digital skills, technology enhanced teaching, health care, higher education
Research Article
Tor Soderstrom, Lars Hall, Tore Nilsson, Jan Ahlqvist
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp. 293-307
ABSTRACT
This study compares the influence of two learning conditions – a screen-based virtual reality radiology simulator and a conventional PowerPoint slide presentation – that teach radiographic interpretation to dental students working in small collaborative groups. The study focused on how the students communicated and how proficient they became at radiographic interpretation. The sample consisted of 36 participants – 20 women and 16 men – and used a pretest/posttest group design with the participants randomly assigned to either a simulation-training group (SIM) or conventional-training group (CON) with three students in each collaborative group. The proficiency tests administered before and after training assessed interpretations of spatial relations in radiographs using parallax. The training sessions were video-recorded. The results showed that SIM groups exhibited significant development between pretest and posttest results, whereas the CON groups did not. The collaboration in the CON groups involved inclusive peer discussions, thorough interpretations of the images, and extensive use of subject-specific terminology. The SIM group discussions were much more fragmented and included more action proposals based on their actions with the simulator. The different learning conditions produced different results with respect to acquiring understanding of radiographic principles.
Keywords: Educational computer based simulations, Collaborative learning, Health care education, 3D Simulations, Peer communication