Going Digital: Conducting Student Research in Teams

Going Digital:

Conducting Student Research in Teams with Web 2.0

We learned of the demands on providers and

the challenges in providing good care

To research health literacy and share the

literature we found with each other

To examine existing practices in the hospital discharge instructions

and Doodle to organize mid-point meetings

wtih the doctors who were

our project sponsors

To develop focus group questions for different heathcare providers

We established a password-protected wiki

We used Google Docs

and text messaging to coordinate our schedules to interview in teams

To develop focus

group

facilitator guides ...

...and coordinate

interviews with multiple providers

To analyze and code data.

To transcribe our notes and organize the work of multiple interview teams

To share transcripts with each other for analysis

Web 2.0 to the

Rescue!

Teaching students to work in teams to conduct a research project can be messy and difficult in terms of coordination needed to organize research activities, including

development of research questions

data gathering

time management

coordination of interviews

coding of interview data

analysis and

preparation to disseminate findings

With grateful appreciation to the faculty and staff of the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System

Thank you for being with us today!

Institutional

requirements for protecting data

include password-protected access and

confidentiality for informants

It's also the story of

33 patient interviews

and 9 focus groups

with 31 healthcare providers in an academic medical center

Presented by

Terry Carter, EdD

Jonathan West, MEd

Virginia Commonwealth University

This is the Story of

Nine Students,

a Research Study,

and a Wiki

The Research Study was undertaken

by graduate students earning the M.Ed. degree

in their final semester of coursework...

...in response to a request from our School of Medicine to help them investigate issues of literacy and health literacy

as factors in hospital readmissions

To answer the question,

What are the barriers to successful care transition from the hospital to the outpatient setting?

The Course was an action learning graduate seminar. Key concepts included reflection

and learning to ask "fresh" questions,

the basics of

action learning methods.

The Challenges Seemed Large

Why hospital readmissions?

• Two teams of students

• All who had full-time jobs

• Who would need to interview patients, doctors, nurses, social workers, and pharmacists

We discovered much

about what it takes to keep us well and healthy...

and of the care needed by patients

Changes in Healthcare Laws

will prohibit government payments

to hospitals for patients readmitted within 30 days for

similar conditions

It's a BIG problem nationwide

costing billions of $$$

This digital story shares some of our findings

All photos are from Flickr and are not of actual patients

but the words spoken are those of patients and providers from transcripts that have been recorded by others