Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 43

Creating Healthcare Apps in Inter-Professional Learning Groups Tracy Coppins ([email protected]) Abstract: For the last five years, the School of Pharmacy have been running an Information Technology for Healthcare (IT4H) module for the Health Foundation Year. From the first week of teaching, students that wish to enter courses within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences are organised into inter-professional groups and are given a collaborative learning task to work on for summative assessment at the end of the twelve- week module. The group task enables social learning as students are expected to work together and learn from each other in order to create an app with a focus on healthcare. The module enables students to demonstrate employability skills including communication and teamwork. IT4H is a core module that all students on HFY take, however they also study a number of subject specific modules which means that the timetable is not the same for everyone. In order to work collaboratively, students are introduced to Google Docs and other software that allow for collaborative working so that they can work together even when they cannot be in the same location. Students soon also find methods of communicating by using social media sites such as Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Students are given a tutor mark for their end product and peer-assess each other’s contribution to the task using a pre-defined criteria with WebPA. Re f l e c t i o n s o n K ee l e Lea r n i n g a n d Tea c h i n g C o n f e r e n c e 43