A Digital Wire for the Fostering Mathematical Medication Learning in Vocational Education

Abstract

The dissertation ‘A Digital Wire for Fostering Mathematical Medication Learning in Vocational Education’, is a study into the effects of the designs of educational environments with digital learning materials on nursing students’ mathematical medication learning, their self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. The designs are improved over three design cycles; from an educational learning environment with digital learning materials with structured content, goals, assignments, instructional clips, procedural clips, and discussion tools, to a computer-based virtual learning environment with professional learning tasks and instructional activities that support learning of cognitive schemes, procedures and knowledge transfer. In current curriculum, mathematics is divided into isolated parts and little attention is paid to the structure of the domain. It is worth nothing that mathematics is assessed only once in the educational program. This, while nursing students are presumed to stay familiar with the complex mathematical medication context. The first two studies showed that the success of learning mathematics with digital learning materials highly depend on the online guidance of the teacher. Therefore, mathematical learning was linked to nursing students’ future professional learning tasks attributed to a computer-based virtual learning environment that pre-programmed students’ self-directed learning and needed no guidance from a teacher. The holistic approach design contributed positively to nursing students’ mathematical medication learning, self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Computer-based virtual learning environments can be used as a technology-enhanced educational assessment system that nursing students can use to train and assess their mathematical medication learning.