Tertiary education in Australia is in a period of dynamic change where teaching and learning practices need to adapt to meet student and institutional needs. This is particularly relevant for health education, where increasing student numbers and high demand for compulsory professional experience placements are challenging our traditional methods of delivery. In response to these challenges, for the first time in Session 3 2019, we piloted the delivery of core clinical units from the Bachelor of Nursing in an intensive and blended online delivery mode. To provide other educators with context, the process for planning and designing the delivery of unit content, engaging both internal and external partners for the successful delivery of teaching, and building clinical placement capacity, will be described.
To gather comprehensive evidence of the impact of this alternate delivery mode, a range of measures were collected and collated. This included the comparison of student success and completion in both academic and clinical practice performance compared to Session 1 teaching, student feedback gathered from student satisfaction ratings, as well as feedback from the community of practice who collaborated and worked in partnership for the design, delivery and administration of the unit. The results were overwhelmingly positive, with high student satisfaction scores, as well as positive feedback on student performance from academic staff, professional staff and external clinical partners. The success of the pilot has led to the expansion of the offering in Session 3 2020 across all campuses.