GEROMNEWSLETTER| ISSUE 4 • October 2010 |

Project team members Helena Blazun, Peter Kokol, Khim Horton and Rita Collins participated at the fourth European

thnursing conference which was held in Rotterdam from 4 till th7 October 2010.

The project members presented the poster with the title “EU project – opportunities for older people”. The conference brought together more than 100 researchers from the field of gerontology and all exchange their ideas and presented their research work.

Image above: Khim Horton, Helena Blazun in front of the poster

Image left: Presentation poster

Fourth European Nursing Conference, Rotterdam, 4-7 October 2010

Inside this issue

?Fourth European Nursing Conference, Rotterdam, 4-7 October 2010

?Intensive programme “Healthy living – HEALTH” 2010

?Evaluation results of intensive programme

?Computer Based Medical Systems Conference, Perth, Australia

?Future exploitation of the project GEROM

Evaluation results of intensive programme

The results in table 1 show that in general students were satisfied with the content and implementation. They were most satisfied with the range of references (Informatics subject) and least with clarity of assessment (Ethics subject). Regarding the individual subjects the students were most satisfied with learning experiences and that the subject was evidence based and least satisfied with the information about assessment criteria in the AAL module. In the Ethics subject the students were most satisfied with the information about opportunity to link with other professionals and the interesting content and least satisfied with the information about assessment criteria. In the Informatics subject the students were most satisfied with the range of references and least satisfied with the information about how to work successfully as a team member which in general was one of the most expressed students concern.

Figure 1 shows the correspondence analysis of the student responses representing the positive aspects associate with individual subjects. We can see that the AAL subject is most associated with the aspect that the student will learn what she has hoped for and the aspect of

Table 1: The average of student answers (1 Very satisfied, 4 Very unsatisfied)

1 1,4667 1,7333 1,2500

2 1,4667 1,7333 1,4167

3 1,7333 1,6667 1,5833

4 1,8667 2,1333 1,4167

10 1,6667 1,8667 1,6667

5 1,6000 1,7333 1,5000

11 1,9333 2,2000 1,5833

6 1,4667 1,6667 1,6667

12 1,9333 2,1333 1,5000

7 1,8667 2,2000 2,0000

13 1,9333 2,4000 1,5000

8 1,6667 1,6000 1,8333

14 1,6000 1,8667 1,1667

9 1,5333 1,6000 1,1667

Question AAL Ethics Informatics

Faculty of Health Sciences University of th thMaribor organized from 14 till 25 June

2010 for the second time Intensive programme “Healthy living – HEALTH”. The first intensive programme was a big success; therefore the CMEPIUS agency awarded the Faculty of Health Sciences with the highest award for the excellent execution of the Erasmus intensive programme in December 2009. The main purpose of the second summer school was to connect students from UK, Ireland and Slovenia with the project work which are coordinated by the Faculty of Health Sciences, but especially to execute the pilot study of the GEROM materials. On the pilot study students was evaluation the study material of the online master degree programme GEROM, which was

developed by the Slovenian, UK, I reland, Austr ian, F innland and Bulgarian partners.

During the Intensive Programme Healthy Living – HEALTH - International Summer school performed at the Faculty of Health Sciences in June 2010 we implemented the pilot execution of the following GEROM subjects:?Ethics?Informatics?Ambient Assisted LivingThe participating 15 students; from UK, Ireland and Slovenia evaluated the content using following 14 questions prepared according to similar projects [10]. and shown bellow, which were developed by the project consortium.

1. A variety of learning experiences are offered to help students meet the module outcomes;

2. The module would enable students learn what they had hoped to gain from it;

3. The learning would help students develop their analytical and problem solving skills;

4. The module would st imulate students' enthusiasm for further learning;

5. The module would improve students'

confidence in tackling unfamiliar problems;

6. Module content was evidence based and re lated to your professional experience;

7. The module would develop students' ability to work as a team member;

8. The module has provided the opportunity to make links with other professionals;

9. The contents of the module are interesting;

10. The contents of the module are at the appropriate level;

11. The number and nature of assessment(s) was clear;

12. The assessment(s) are related to the module outcomes;

13. There is clarity of information about assessment criteria;

14. There are a good range of references provided for students;

Students evaluated the study materials with ranking: 1 = Very Satisfied, 2 = Satisfied, 3 = Unsatisfied, 4 = Very Unsatisfied.

Intensive programme “Healthy living – HEALTH” 2010

http://www.fzv.uni-mb.si/iss2010/

team working. The Informatics subject is positively associated with stimulating student's enthusiasm, clearness of nature of assessment and that the assessment is related to subjects' outcomes. The Ethics subject is positively associated with the ability of learning analytical and problem solving skills. The figure 2 also shows that none of the subject has large positive association with the variety of learning experiences to meet module outcomes, skills to improve student's confidence to tackle unknown problems and interesting content of the subject.

Figure 1: Correspondence analysis of students responses

Pilot execution of the GEROM

Computer Based Medical Systems Conference, Perth, Australia

Helena Blazun and Peter Kokol presented the paper with the title “GEROM – On-line virtual environment for postgraduate health care education” on the conference where gathered experts from all over the world and is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and supported by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). CBMS 2010 provids an international forum for discussing the latest research in the field of computational biomedicine. The conference included keynote addresses given by leading scientists in the field, as well as regular and special track presentations that cover a broad range of issues which relate to computing in medicine.

Image right: Presentation of the GEROM project, Perth, October 2010

EditorsPeter KokolHelena BlažunGregor Štiglic

Prepared byHelena Blažun

DesignBorut Gaber

DisclaimerThis project has been/is funded with support from the European Commission under the Agreement number 2007-2 5 8 3 / 0 0 1 - 0 0 1 , p r o j e c t number 134498-LLP-1-SI-ERASMUS-ECDSP.

This contribution reflects views/view only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Further details and contact information for the GEROM project can be found on the G E R O M w e b p a g e a t (http://www.gerom.net/).

In the year 2010 (March) the project coordinator started very intensive preparat ion, w i th in the b i la tera l cooperation with United States, searching the possible joint degree project partners in USA. The main idea of the project consortium is to expand the project GEROM to other multinational and multilingual levels, and in this way to offer the proper gerontological education to all health care professionals who are dealing with older people. The fact is that the world is changing, we are facing with the intensive aging of population all over the world.

During the bilateral cooperation GEROM project coordinator Helena Blažun and

Future exploitation of the project GEROM

Peter Kokol visited three universities in the USA (University of Memphis, Memphis; Vanderbilt University, Nashville; The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore), where they prepared detailed presentation on GEROM project and invited the possible US partners to join the initiative.Project was accepted very well and the consortium received many recognitions and acknowledgement regarding the curr iculum. Therefore the project consortium with the interested USA partners will started formal procedures to extend the GEROM curriculum to USA in the scope of Erasmus Mundus Initiative. We will propose a common project in the year 2011.

The project coordinator Peter Kokol later visited also the University of California, School of Nursing, San Francisco where he had a meeting with the prof. dr. Kathleen Dracup, dean of the school and also presented the project GEROM and invited researchers to be part of the educational system of the study programme GEROM. She was very interested for possible exchange of students and t e a c h i n g a n d l e a r n i n g experiences.

I m a g e b e l o w : U S A – E U cooperation: Peter Kokol, Linda Finch, Helena Blažun