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Ever since I began to share my experience of postnatal illness, I have been honoured to present to health care students. I am told that it really helps them to learn about the impact their knowledge and actions can have upon people in their care. Listening to ‘real’ stories brings the facts and figures to life and helps them to appreciate that they can make a positive difference to the lives of others.

Over the past couple of years I have been delighted to be on the Nursing Programme Committee of the Open University  and through it have been offered opportunities.

This week I was thrilled to be invited by another member of the committee to be part of an exciting new project for midwifery students at De Montford University in Leicester,  called the MORE PROJECT (Midwifery Open Resources for Education)

This is a Joint Information Services Committee (JISC) funded project within Health and Life Sciences to release midwifery open educational resources (OER) and here is some information about it.

The Midwifery Team aim to:

•             Collect, transform first year midwifery teaching and learning materials used within an undergraduate programme.  (Year 2 and 3 to follow in due course)

•             Evaluate the use of the materials by first year midwifery students and practice mentors who have no experience of using open educational resources.

•             Evaluate the use of the midwifery OERs by FE Colleges with students who are considering a career in midwifery

Benefits of the project:

•             All the materials are currently in use in the midwifery programme and are updated yearly for each cohort of midwifery students. Therefore, once established all materials will be readily available to all lecturers on the Midwifery Programme Team and materials will remain current and evidence based as they continue to be used year on year.

•             For the first time the students’ practice mentors will have access to the midwifery curriculum to addresses the theory practice gap.

•             Students will be able to access the learning materials across their programme, currently this is restricted to the module they are enrolled on through the virtual learning environment.

•             Midwifery lecturers will have a central resource for all materials so there should be no duplication of effort or resource

•             Materials will available to prospective learners and teachers, they can assess the quality of teaching at DMU and better prepare for entry to university

They are using some of their media and drama students to bring scenarios to life in addition to having film clips with people from outside the university.

Hence my role! I made a few clips with them including my story, some ways to ease anxiety and tips on maternal mental health and midwifery practice. Thank you to Jacqui, Ben and Mike for making me feel so welcome.

I look forward to seeing the finished result and hope that the MORE project is a success – I strongly suspect that it will be!

Elaine

http://www.greatvine.com/elaine-hanzak