Improving the Use of E-learning in Health Care Curricula: Presentation of best Practices

Abstract

E-learning is nowadays included in different health care curricula. However, this learning and teaching approach is still relatively underused in the health care study programmes. Hence, the goal of this article is to present three e-learning best practices in health care, which were validated in our previous projects/studies.First best practice, e-learning practice contents for the development of critical thinking, presents the approach which resulted in significant (p<0.001) raise in the number of discussion posts (+12.2%) for which the opinions and conclusions of the participants were justified with valid arguments. Furthermore, also the survey results showed that students achieve critical thinking skills with these contents. Second best practice, inclusion of the health care students in the development of e-contents, also resulted as a valid approach for improving the use of e-learning in health care curricula, which was confirmed by the expert opinion and e-contents final users. Finally, third best practice, our approach for evaluation and comparison of e-learning and traditional pedagogical elements value by health care students and teachers, was confirmed in the interview with the management as a valid approach that helps the management to identify whether previous elearning initiatives and activities were successful. Best practices, presented in this paper, represent the evidence that the use of modern information and communication technologies should be considered in the future as a serious requisite in health care study programmes. The broader community interested in the e-learning initiative should prepare a list of similar best practices, validate its effectiveness and prepare guidelines for their optimal implementation..

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