“Use of an Interactive Case study in distant education"

1. Interdisciplinary Distance Learning Interactive Case Studies

Role modeling behavior is an invaluable tool when teaching a practice profession. Depending on face-to-face interchange with students as a teaching technique becomes problematic when the student is at a distance. Therefore, other ways to communicate the subtleties of a patient interview must be explored. Our answer to this dilemma was to partner with the College of Nursing, Center for Academic Technologies & Educational Resources (CATER) and develop a first person interactive case study (ICS) to simulate the process of a nurse practitioner interacting with a patient. The differential diagnosis course w is designed to teach students how to evaluate patient symptoms and understand that through careful questioning, history taking, physical and laboratory assessment, a list of possible diagnoses emerge. A mixed methods research study was developed to determine whether engaging in an interactive case study produces similar learning outcomes to interacting with a standardized patient face-to-face. Equivalence testing was used to determine clinical rather than only statistical significance in data from 291 students (distance learning n = 150, on-site n = 141). The goal was to determine whether or not students in both settings had equivalent, rather than identical learning outcomes.  We found that ICS responses from our distance learning and on-site students differed by only 4.9%, which was well within our a priori equivalence estimate of 10% difference. Narrative data and qualitative analysis was implemented to explore the processes used by each group of students as they developed their differential diagnosis list. Qualitative data strongly support that varied learning styles of the students completing the ICS were successfully addressed. With increased enrollments in distance learning practitioner programs, it is critical that we demonstrate that the learning outcomes are comparable to those achieved by on-site students. Narrative data analysis indicated that the students valued and appreciated the experiential nature of this learning activity and wanted more ICS throughout their curriculum. Data support the conclusion that we have developed an innovative way of providing online students with experiential learning comparable, in our sample, to that achieved by on-site students.