Nursing students can teach their peers by developing e-learning resources

IN 2009, the National Network for Learning Disability Nurses (NNLDN) conference was challenged to ensure that the poor standards of care highlighted in reports from the Health Care Commission (2006), the Disability Rights Commission (2006) and Death by Indifference report (Mencap 2007) were never repeated. Much of the poor care that exists stems from institutional discrimination, complacency and the attitudes or lack of education of healthcare professionals themselves (Joint Committee on Human Rights 2008, Michael 2008). These are now being addressed in healthcare training, and the rapid growth in use of computers in education (Childs et al 2005) has opened up new avenues for tackling the issues and involving students in the process. The opportunities that technology offers to simulate practice scenarios through the use of images, video, animations, audio and interactive exercise, are particularly relevant at a time when the practice-based experience that many healthcare students get in learning disability-based settings is being reduced or lost altogether. Despite this potential, much is written about the digital divide between those who have grown up with the internet, so-called digital natives, and those who have come to technology later in life, known as digital immigrants. Students increasingly represent the former and are confident, or even prefer to work, socialise and study, in the online environment. Many lecturers fall into the latter category and, even though they may be technologically competent, are not fully at ease with this new digital culture. There appear to be fundamental differences in the approaches and preferences of these two groups when it comes to educational technology (Prensky 2001). If online resources are to be effective in informing and challenging learners about the rights and needs of individuals with a learning disability, perhaps the students themselves and not their lecturers are best placed to design them. Here we describe a project in which a group of learning disability nursing students designed and developed relevant learning resources for their peers.