Professional Experience Placement

Welcome to the clinical supervision blog .  This is the first blog for 2017. The plan is to continue blogging about professional experience or clinical supervision issues, articles and continuing professional development opportunities that are relevant to nurses and health professionals, especially those who guide, support and mentor health profession students in the workplace. You are welcome to respond to the blog with comments or suggestions and also join the conversation by becoming a member of the virtual community of practice @PEPCommunity.  you can engage or be a lurker… we don’t mind, so please join us @PEPCommunity.

This article by Gillies (2016) highlights some of the dilemmas and issues also found with nurses using mobile devices in the professional experience or workplace environment. The issue of bring your own (BYOD) or use of a supplied device seems to be quite vexed as supply indicates sanctioned use, whereas BYOD seems to imply illegitimacy. The author provides a background to mobile devices for learning and the argument for and against BYOD in the classroom.  These positives for BYOD include personal ownership promotes engagement; reduce costs for institutions; better fit with students expectations and lifestyles. Negative aspects include inequity of access; increased personal distractions and risk of theft. Technical support and guidance can also be an issue with BYOD. Gillies (2016) also discusses the issue using technology acceptance models. The purpose of this article was to explore academic acceptance using focus group and semi-structured interview methodology. The author describes the process in detail. He attempted to ensure the focus of the group was on use rather than the devices to ensure any themes emerged naturally, rather than driven by faculty or other confounding discussions

The author notes a limitation of the study was the number of participants, however, the emerging themes do provide information that can be corroborated.  He found responsibility, attitude and device heterogeneity to be the most important. Gillies (2016) also reported acceptance was difficult to determine due to the ‘multiplexity’ of the relationships between them.

Issues with device use from academics included reliability of students to remember to charge the devices, install correct apps, have enough space on their devices or even remembering to bring it to class. If devices were supplied, many of these barriers were eliminated and also technical assistance was available. All these issues are  directly relatable to using mobile devices for learning in the workplace. It was noted however, that BYOD was useful for short, replaceable or contingent tasks.  Moreover, BYOD was easier because there was no need to book devices, personal ownership could reduce inappropriate use/silliness, available anytime, responsible for their own devices and students would know how to use their own device.  In contrast the barriers included phone use attitude, limited technical and task control, likelihood that supervisors/academics would have user experience to be relevant for the whole class; academic issues with personal devices; lack of organisational support and inequity of access.

There was also discussion by Gillies (2016) that some academics reported the tension of using phones for work/life balance. There is description of the struggle by participants due to historical understanding of use of phones for learning and teaching that will need to be overcome if BYOD is to become integrated into the learning environment. The author notes the perceived negativity of using phones in contrast to other methods such as tablets. This article highlights that this group of participants preferred to use supplied devices due to their homogeneity.  However it was also notes that students prefer to use devices they already have experience with and already use it as an informal contingent tool. It seems further research will provide further information regarding whether to BYOD or not.

If you have any comments about BYOD or supplied devices, you are welcome to post them here.  Please join us @PEPCommunity.