Reconstructing nurse learning using computer mediated communication (CMC) technologies: an exploration of ideas

Abstract

Computerised technology has become a way of life. As the traditional emphasis in learning is undergoing a shift toward a digital world we need to embrace the emergent technologies as appropriate to the context of nursing and nurse learning. As nurse graduates enter a computer driven health care system we have a responsibility as nurse educators to ensure that they are computer familiar as borne out by the recent discussion papers released by the Nursing Council of New Zealand (2000a), which define the requirements for the practitioner of the future. Concurrently there is a call from the discipline of nursing for practitioners who have a form of knowledge that will bring about change within the socio-political context of the discipline as an outcome of critically reflective knowledge skills. Jurgen Habermas' (1971) treatise on knowledge and human interests, which offers a multi-paradigmatic approach to three forms of knowledge culminating in the emancipatory form provides a conceptual framework for many under-graduate pre-registration nursing curricula in Aotearoa-New Zealand. This thesis offers an exploration of my ideas about contemporary undergraduate pre-registration nursing preparation in Aotearoa-New Zealand, associated knowledge outcomes, and the consequent links with contemporary computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies. It positions a framework for integrating CMC technologies and the action of critically reflective practice as a learning journey. The framework is hypothetical and pragmatic. It emerges from the exploration of the thesis and is posited as a way toward integrating CMC technologies within extant undergraduate pre-registration nursing curricula in Aotearoa-New Zealand. The learning journey is comprised of three dimensions, learning-for-practice, learning-from-practice and learning-with-practice and draws on four different cyber constructs: being, knowing, relating and dialoguing. Being is established as an ontological position of nursing and nurse learning. Knowing, relating and dialoguing are ontological positions taken in relation to being. The learning journey sustains some derivation from the Habermasian (1971) based conceptual framework. There is a need for nurse educators to consider this in relation to contemporary CMC technologies. I hope that this framework will serve those with an interest in nurse education and who are interested in a future using CMC technologies within the realities of nursing practice and education.