HeLM - HORUS e-Learning Management

Lead Contact: Gillian Armitt, Gillian.Arrmitt@manchester.ac.uk

JISC Programme: JISC e-Learning Programme

Lead Institution and Partners: University of Manchester (Lead institution), Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospital South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Project Dates: October 2006 - September 2008

This case study illustrates Work-based Learning, Application, Technologies, Healthcare, PDP/CPD, Assessment

Background & Context

What is the background to the e-portfolio initiative?

Undergraduate learning in health sciences includes substantial periods on placement in the workplace (hospitals, etc) and at postgraduate practitioner level, learning may almost exclusively be work-based, as in Medicine. Workplace learning brings particular challenges as much of the learning is difficult to specify, being dependent on the availability of patients and circumstances being presented. It is therefore essential that students develop strategies for opportunities for self-directed learning to ensure curriculum coverage, and also that workplace teacher development supports this. Administrative processes should support a common learning experience distributed across multiple providers.

The HeLM project is founded on the HORUS family of learning management technologies, which focus on e-tools for learner-centred work-based lifelong learning. HORUS is based on a pedagogic model of 'Experience-based learning' whose generalisability increases the likelihood that HORUS will transfer to other fields of study. The HORUS suite has benefitted from previous JISC-funded development. It includes services supporting undergraduate medical education (HORUS-UG), early postgraduate education (HORUS-FP), specialist medical postgraduate education (HORUS-ST), the in-service training of diabetes health care professionals (HORUS-Diabetes) and basic nurse education (ULYSSES).

What were the aims and objectives of the initiative?

The HORUS e-Learning Management (HeLM) project aimed to extend the earlier JISC-funded HORUS learning management services to a wider range of applications, institutions, and stages in the lifelong learning continuum and link them to other JISC-funded projects. Specifically to:

• Support in-depth reflective learning
• Support teachers' learning from students' evaluations of their teaching
• Establish pedagogic and technical means of linking e-learning to assessment
• Support learning management in the workplace
• Extend the implementation of HeLM services within and beyond Medicine

Additional objectives were:

• deliver a validated formal systems analysis model and service specification comprising new and existing functionality and will contribute services to the e-Framework
• evaluate the technical and human/organisational aspects of the HeLM approach to the software development lifecycle, with a view to making recommendations to the e-learning community concerning transferability to new environments

How was the initiative implemented?

The overall HeLM approach comprised:

• User requirements gathering, encompassing proposed new functionality and existing HORUS functionality, and their capture in a UML model
• Development of an ontology to clarify understanding
• Identification of services
• Validation of the UML model and service specification
• Development of sample services (Topcat and assessment demonstrator)
• Roll-out and change management (Topcat)
• Stakeholder evaluation of new and existing MedLea-HORUS functionality
• Iterative refinement of the systems analysis model and service specification
• Preparation of contributions to the e-Framework
• Evaluation of the HeLM approach