DELIVERING EDUCATION THROUGH TAUGHT AND BLENDED LEARNING: MEETING THE NEEDS OF INDIVIDUALS

In the United Kingdom it is a requirement of the regulator for nursing and midwifery, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) that student nurses undertaking a pre-registration nursing programme leading to professional registration, are mentored by an appropriately qualified registrant. At the University of Southampton we offer the mentorship module through a variety of different routes; a taught five day course, an Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning AP(E)L course for experienced practitioners, a mixed mode and elearning. The delivery of such a variety of modes is complex, and on average in one year we deliver sixty modules across a number of geographical sites.
The taught mentorship course consists of 10 days learning, of which 5 days are taught and the other five days made up of work-based learning, and our alternative approaches include a pathway that takes into consideration the persons previous experiences in supporting learners in clinical environments. The resultant accreditation of prior (experiential) learning or AP(E)L route has been developed as a result of feedback which seeks more flexible approaches to gaining a mentorship qualification. In response, the mentorship teaching team have made available a structured AP(E)L route to enable practitioners to gain a recognised and NMC approved qualification, using an approach which recognises any relevant pre-existing qualifications and experiences, and in so doing avoiding unnecessary prepetition. The AP(E)L route provides an opportunity for such practitioners to work with a named AP(E)L advisor who is also a member of the University mentorship academic education team, to provide and present evidence of their achievements which are then matched to the NMC’s learning outcomes for mentorship. Any discrepancies can then be addressed by the applicant through the development of a learning agreement with the AP(E)L advisor. This mode of delivery is therefore designed to facilitate a formal A(E)L claim for the mentorship qualifications using pre-existing experiences and qualifications, and is recognised and approved by the NMC . In order to meet the ever increasing demand for mentorship education, the team have also developed options for online and blended deliveries. Through our experiences and in response to student and service colleague feedback the team have developed the online modules to feature greater interactivity through the use of podcasts, vodcasts, and wikis, together with the use of features such as adapted release and formative assessment using question mark perception.
To date there have been 24 modules delivered via the online and blended learning approaches, supporting in excess of 400 students, and in excess of 500 have successfully completed AP(E)L claims.