Retrospect: What have I done so far?

Let me be honest: I have not done much as of yet. The little I have done I shall now give the highlights below.

• Have been discussing with my project manager Dr Roshan for quite a few months now on what to do and based on the needs of my employer Western Infirmary, I finally decided to do something along the lines of:

1. Website for WI - General Information
2. Patient Education Area - Instructional Videos, Calculators
3. Price Management System - Simple Dbase for collection centres
4. Nurse Education Learning Management System for WI-NAITA (National Apprentice and Industrial Training Authority) courses specifically the 3 year formal training to become a NAITA qualified nurse

• On further discourse with WI I find that we are also taking part in a larger plan of regularizing already established nurses in the private sector (about 6000 of them) who have 10+ years of experience but who do not have formal qualifications & that setting up a course for these senior students is of greater importance. I had already run face-face course for a similar cohort of students so at least I have the advantage of a historical control! I agree to change my ideas to accommodate this need.
• I had my first meeting with Dr Pandula who is in charge of the "Informatics for Medical Education" elective students. Very useful meeting him. I think one thing that came about (till I meet my final project supervisor of course) is that it better to focus on one thing and narrow the scope down. So planning out a project based on a LMS for the refresher nursing course would be considered adequate at least at this stage rather than trying to write up the project on the website, patient information areas etc. as I has mentioned above as all the salient features of those (e.g. content, delivery methods) would more or less be covered by this as well. Some things I gathered from this (based on the steps to a project charter)

1. Working Title: Blended learning approach to teach nurses in a private health care setting in Sri Lanka
2. Introduction:
1. Introduction to the background of teaching nurses via the blended learning method
2. Introduction the short course we have done already without any system
3. Literature review
1. Formulating Objectives
1. Go through the course
2. Make a list of things that have been done and divide the work to lesson, video, etc.
3. Formulate the objective of this project
2. Use a good search engine like MEDLINE
3. See if you can get the articles you need ~ 10 - 15
4. Then do a systematic review as competently as possible
3. Business Case:
1. Formulate a good feedback form which can be used for the previous batch who did not have a system and get their views
2. Discuss the issues brought up
3. Finally it should be the issues of the current system
4. Measurable Objectives
1. As has been told before the literature review we need to break down the course and see what type of objectives can be done.
2. I shall try to enlist the advice of our directors as well.
3. Measurably doing these objectives can only be done via the feedback form and its a more qualitative than quantitative review
5. Deliverables: I did not discuss this
6. Scope of the project: I did not discuss this
7. Parameters of measurement of success:
1. I suppose for the moment the working issue is the feedback comparison from the batch without the system vs the students who used the system
2. I can also randomly select lessons, multimedia instructions and do a pre and post feedback
8. High End Resources Needed: Not discussed.
9. High End Risk and Mitigation Plan:
1. Language Problem: Perhaps an accompanying booklet in Sinhala
2. Technical Problem:
1. I would like to conduct a Moodle training course before starting
2. Also students would still have to attend the face - face classes but the feedback will only be from the on-line one.
3. What would I do if I do not get the chance to conduct the blended learning course with the refresher students?
   
10. Sponsor: Well that I can do!
11. Project Schedule: Cannot be thought about until things like objective and deliverables are in order.

That is all I have done so far. As it stands I now need to:

• Have some sort of idea the work in this syllabus for the refresher nurses.
• Meet Dr Pandula and get a final idea of my rough objectives and get the basic idea of the literature review
• Meet Dr Roshan and get a basic idea of how to construct the project charter
• Meet Dr Gominda, My supervisor armed with this basic information to refine the rough stone into a gem! (Wishful thinking I am aware!)

So that is the retrospect. As of today I am busy OCRing the syllabus to take to Dr Pandula either today or tomorrow and then meet Dr Roshan and then Dr Gominda. I have been cut short for time as I have taken leave to assist my wife in her education pursuits in Hyderabad from September 12th - 26th so I hope all bear with me through email during that period.