Integration of the Assure model for bachelor of nursing training: an international project

Rapid development of digital technologies, systems and resources, designed, among other things, to be used in education, initiates rethinking of the learning process itself and encourages the development of new education concepts and paradigms [1]. However, traditional educational systems are not prepared for practical answers, challenges of complexity, uncertainty, diversity and unpredictability of the world order [2]. An example is the global problem of the 2020 pandemic – COVID 19, which has defined a special role for medical personnel and, in particular, for nurses. In this new challenging context, the requirements for the format of the educational process have changed, the whole world was forced to switch from offline education to e-learning. In this regard, online teaching requires application of a new instructional model, improvement of pedagogical technologies and use of digital technologies in education as a way of organising a modern educational environment, including when teaching nurses1. Nurses often need to provide emergency care. The ability to quickly and accurately draw up and implement an action plan is influenced by algorithms of both motor and mental actions, therefore, over time, the implementation of the algorithms should become automatic. The will, freed from the obligation to control every action, concentrates on the main direction of activity2. The effectiveness of training special practical algorithms can be achieved by introducing digital technologies into the educational process. Notably, digital technologies in the educational process significantly change the approaches to teaching and independent work of students. The integration of such technologies into the educational process can contribute to a higher level of knowledge and greater interest of students in the learning process3 [3]. A promising application of digital technologies in education is the creation of unified e-platforms for teaching students from different countries, which will expand the possibilities for absorbing knowledge, practicing and consolidating skills, which is especially important for bachelors of nursing. The transcultural educational environment created on the e-platform presupposes openness and mutual involvement of participants in the educational process [4]. This is a feature of e-learning platforms, where digital technologies can be used to teach students from different countries, and should be taken into account in the process of instructional design. In turn, e-learning involves the use of digital educational materials, which also imposes special requirements on the educational process. There are also some peculiarities in the preparation of educational materials using digital technologies for students in different areas of training, in different courses. In this regard, the emergence of modern opportunities for the use of digital technologies in order to exchange knowledge, educational materials and methods of mastering practical skills in the field of medicine, as well as the expansion of e-learning in the world imply the need for a general model and a design of training that would facilitate adaptation of the necessary information and integrate it into the educational process on a unified e-platform, in a generally accessible form for students from different countries and different courses, including bachelors of nursing.

The subject discussed in the present paper is the joint educational project “Digital Toolbox for Innovation in Nursing Education (I-BOX)ˮ within the Erasmus+ programme. The project coordinator is Fundación Tecno-campus, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), the project partners are Sechenov University (Russia), University of Maribor (Slovenia), UMIT University (Austria), Turku University of Applied Sciences (Finland). The paper represents the materials of the project on behalf of I-BOX Strategic Partnership Consortium. The study was aimed at developing an ASSURE model for designing the educational process of training for bachelors of nursing on an e-platform using e-learning educational materials.