Nursing education on line.

Online education for nurses, respiratory technicians, physical therapists, and other medical professions is still being debated. Most educators feel that the most appropriate setting for training and practice in "hands-on" patient care is at the bedside or in clinical settings.

However, the idea is growing that some content areas may be appropriately presented online. The evoloving designs are blended learning: theory online, practical training on-site.

Here are some online examples:

Midwestern State University (Wichita Falls, Texas)

Texas Woman's University (Denton, Texas)

University of Texas at Arlington (Arlington, Texas)

El Centro Community College (Dallas, Texas)

Online nursing and health-care education represents a growing market for eLearning Entrepreneurs, in my opinion. Here is an example of one of the driving forces behing this growth.

[For more details, see the September, 2003 issue of Pulse: Monitoring the beat of the North Texas Health Care Industry, also available offline]

3:17:02 PM    

Developing a Creative Enterprise.

This article (Developing a Creative Practice) is interesting from two standpoints. For one, Wendy is talking about how to grow and thrive in an environment where creativity of solutions is not valued as much as economy of cost. In other words, where the perception of many practitioners is that low cost wins over high value. Is this true? In a way, it doesn't matter. What matters is how you build your business.

The other aspect to the article is the author's use of collaborative and constructivist techniques in teaching visual arts. Granted, this is not a field in which many readers of this weblog will be involved. But her approach to education is one that will clearly and relatively easily translate into e-Learning and into training a network marketing downline. What matters is how you get your learners to learn.

"When I go to a yoga class, or any exercise class, I expect to be told what to do. But the new yoga place I recently attended was clearly different. First of all, I couldn’t figure out who the teacher was. Second, no one was doing the same thing; any unison of movement was coincidental. I looked for someone—anyone!—to follow. After a while, one of the people (who, it turns out, was the 'teacher') came over to me and said, 'It’s best if you develop your own practice. That way you won’t have to depend on someone else to lead you, and you’ll be able to discover what you need.' As the class continued, I noticed that his interactions with others were individual corrections, not instructions.

I soon discovered that this was not an exercise class. The weekly meeting is one of the ways that each member bolsters the commitment to his or her own progress. It’s a time and place where people come together to support a self-directed and self-motivated practice."

(This entry is duplicated on the Home Page, in eLearning Entrepreneur, and in Network Marketing for Entrepreneurs. Normally I won't parallel post, but this article contains important insights and I don't want those who only subscribe to one category or the other to miss this.)

[Communication Arts]

2:44:35 PM