TA: Thank you for [V5] for taking part in this validation event for me. The purpose of the discussion is really to just present to you the categories that I developed from the research data and the whole intention is so that you can tell me whether you can see yourself within that data or whether you can see the ideas that you shared in that data, or whether there's any examples that would really illustrate that well, or challenge it. So, I'm open to views of challenging as well, not just saying ‘oh yeah, that's fine, that category looks great. That's okay. So, I did two lots of interviews. From the data that I collected through the interviews I focused first on people's personal experience of using free online learning and then focused on what we need to do to prepare people in the second stage of the interviews. And I'm now using the term free online learning because nobody really talked about open education resources. Nobody really knew specifically what they were, and nobody was using them in the context that they're intended to be used, in their reusable, licenced way. So, I'm just talking about free online learning now.

This is a presentation of what I've come up with really. So, this is the categories and subcategories that I've developed from those people's experiences, and then from looking at what we need to do to help people to prepare for using this free online learning I had two main categories. So, first of all was professional learning as a social endeavour and that was all about learning with other people and also making learning meaningful, so that you were doing it for a purpose that wasn't just mandatory training or something like that. And then the second one was being swallowed up in practice and that phrase came straight from one of the participants about how they felt nurses really are just swallowed up in practice, and also the educators are as well, when they're trying to do their online CPD. They need to feel supported. They need to have time and space for learning that is actually protected because, the reality is that it doesn't appear many people actively go out and seek CPD, because they've just not got the time and the energy to do it.

V5: So, a couple of things that sprang into my mind, I can surely relate it to being swallowed up in practice for two reasons, and I can see the development about my approach with the online learning. It has changed over time because if I look at myself back when I was in the hospital it was literally, I felt it was like a tick box exercise at some points, because I felt that I needed to. You remember, there was the green brain kind of thing. Because you kind of need to achieve that and every time because you didn't have the time, you would build up and build up on what you needed to achieve, and you didn't actually have the time to explore what you actually wanted to explore. Whereas nowadays I kind of have to select my own training, so I need to focus on what I want to learn to achieve my goals, for my [academic programme] so I can see how that has changed over time. Even now, being swallowed up in practice is actually still quite valid, because as a part time student and a full-time worker, I really struggle to fit into the workshops offered by the [faculty name]. So, it's a little bit of a juggle to kind of try to free my time to be able to attend the workshops. But, for example, if it is online, if it is available to me, then I can use that time at different, you know in a different location when I actually do have the time. So, I will select my learning, put the links down somewhere in a box and then I can access it a different time.

TA: Yes.

V5: Professional learning as social endeavour and working with others. I'm not sure how much I can relate to that because if I consider the typical online learning where it's videos rather than, or you know even if it is interactive, it’s you interacting with the machine so I can't interact with other people unless it's an actual workshop. But the actual chance of going to a workshop, I personally can do it's not good. So, I’ve got mixed experience here and I can partially relate to that, yes.

TA: Okay, Thank you. What I could do is just move to the next slide which just summarises each of the subcategories, so that it might give a better sense of the context of how I got to that, because the truth is people don't do free online learning with other people at all or share it.

V5: Yes. I started to think that others had a different take on it. I was different to all the other people. 

TA: But what was really important was that in everybody's interviews, this category really reflects the social nature of learning for practice and the fact that nursing is about practice, it’s about experience. So, people highlighted the importance of working and learning with others for fact checking information, even from online learning. Discussion of examples, especially where professional knowledge is applied in practice, so just doing an online free learning resource isn't very helpful. 

V5: Maybe in a profession like ours, where you actually are working in a team twenty-four seven, you actually seek that kind of experience to be reflected in your learning as well.

TA: Yes, and somebody said, it's in the feeling supported category, but somebody said actually they would never just go to open or online learning if they wanted to learn something, they would go and ask somebody first, always. They would never just think ‘ohh, I'll go and learn that online’. Again, it was all about mandatory. There was a lot of attention in the focus group on mandatory training and how it is all consuming, how it is a tick box exercise, how it stops people being interested in open learning because of the style of it and how you just don't want to go to it and do it, because it is isolating and people tend to be working on their computers at home, or in a quiet space so that they can get their protected time. There was some evidence of sharing and discussion of learning, supporting peer-to-peer learning, but it was very minimal really. So, although this is a category, the emphasis is on the importance of learning with others because professional learning is social. It is kind of an anti-free open learning if you like. So, I don't know, does that help relate it any better?

V5: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. I can relate to the feeling that it's not helpful and it sounds like it's a tick box exercise, and I'd rather do it collaboratively with other people and find solutions together or find learning together and not do it online.

TA: Yes, and somebody in the focus group did explain how they were doing some online learning with a colleague because they were sharing an office, and they both had online learning to do. So, in that sense, they would do it at the same time and they found that was much more interesting and much more beneficial, but on the whole it's an isolating experience doing free online learning and people just dread doing it anyway because of it being hideous. That thought of just sitting in front of a computer flicking through pages, doing a test, is very boring. I'll move on to the next one unless you've got any other comments about the previous one. The next one is about making learning meaningful. So, this was a bit about what you said. You've got things now that you want to go to and learn about because you've got a reason to do it. 

V5: Yes.

TA: So, people do engage with that kind of free online learning differently, but actually, on the whole their focus is just the mandatory training because that's all they've got the time and the space for, because they have to do that because otherwise they'll get an e-mail or their brain won't turn green. They'll be in trouble. 

V5: Yes.

TA: Also, in this category came up about learning not feeling meaningful because the employers aren't interested largely in the extra learning that you're doing. Now, they might be because of the role that you're doing and the type of learning you're doing. You might find people are interested in that, but on the whole, employers only want to know about the mandatory training. There was also a feeling that in general, nurses, it links a bit to being swallowed up in practice, but they're not naturally driven to undertake independent CPD or to go to free online learning. But what they will do is in the moment, when they've got something to look up in practice about a condition that somebody's presenting with, or an experience, then they'll go then and they'll look at something but they won't do it as open learning, they'll just do it as a reference point. So, that was quite key in the way that I'm thinking about how this research is progressing.

V5: I still feel the motivation to do it by myself, but it just depends on you know if I do find the time, because I remember myself, these [online learning resources] started being in practice. I remember myself going and looking extra learning about ECG interpretation and things that I was interested in, like mechanical ventilation, or you know, complex conditions. It's just, it's the overall experience I guess, because I have ended up doing it in my own time, whereas if you're expecting that to be within your contracted time then you only actively only have the time to do the mandatory ones, which change your complete experience of the online learning because you only have the time to do what is mandatory, and you got justification for doing something else rather than the [training] meeting because you need to achieve that in that amount of time, because the investor has to be compliant, for example. Yes, so unless you’re ready to do it in your own time, which I guess in these maybe I might be different because I haven't got children, single, so maybe I am more prone to say ‘okay, I can spend a couple of hours studying, learning that in my own time’. But it's not the expectation for everyone else because they might have different life commitments, hugely different from me. So, I think in in these I might slightly differ from.

TA: Yes. What you're describing actually did come up in some of the interviews about people being really driven to learn because they had a purpose, and therefore that made learning meaningful. So in that context there were some individuals who were always driven to learn, because they wanted to be a better practitioner. They wanted to extend their scope of their role, or they wanted to apply for a promotion, or they'd got a promotion and wanted to hit the ground running when they started by having a lot more information, so that they didn't come across as ill-informed, if you like. 

V5: Yes.

TA: So, it does also reflect that as well, this category, is that if people are invested and driven then they will go and do it, and largely those people did do it in their own time, but they did it because there was a purpose in doing it because it would help them with their role and it would help them be a better practitioner.

V5: Yes, I can see that.

TA: That's helpful. Thank you. If you've got no more thoughts or examples on that one, I'll move on to the next one. So, part of being up swallowed up in practice was about a need to feel supported and that was right from the start. Some people were saying about how often people come without any technical knowledge at all, don't know how to use IT equipment or apps or things like that. If you do have that situation and there's not physical support available, then you would disengage straight away. But also, it was more probably about cognitive support, so it was about people needing to understand how to effectively search out really good, free online learning resources and how to assess how relevant and accurate they were. So, they wanted to be supported by getting those materials validated by an educator largely, and then signposted to them. And even the educators wanted to get signposted to validated resources as well. So, you and I working in practice, we might say, ‘oh, well, if somebody recommends a really good free online learning resource, that's great’. But there's some extent of reliance as well on the really trusted portals like e-Learning for Health, or NHS professionals and others like that which we know go through a whole set of procedures in order to be put on the portal.
It was also about having support from managers and peers in the practice context, so that included educators being able to provide support and guidance in the moment, or to be able to signpost relevant areas for thinking about practice development or CPD. And again, this fact that it's quite useful to learn with others or at least have the opportunity to discuss with others, because that helps to develop critical analysis skills. And then once you get critical analysis skills then you're more able to go ahead and do things on your own. 

V5: Yes. So, in terms of engagement, you mentioned about e-Learning for Health and I tried it some time ago and I think at the time it wasn’t very accessible, and I think. I don't know if you found this in your collection stage, but I tend to sync well not only when I'm interested in the topic, but I'm also, like the message is conveyed to me in the way that I can perceive them. It might come from an ADHD, perhaps dyslexic kind of thing, so if whatever information is conveyed to me is not delivered in a way that I can read it, I kind of get disengaged as well. So, if I need to do it because it's a mandatory training, that's an even worse experience, whereas if I chose that one, that training is always successful. I find it really easy and I want to do more, and I'm more prone to come back to that same provider. But I found that the e-Learning for Health wasn't very accessible kind of access.

TA: Thank you for sharing that. It was one of the things that came up, not specifically related to e-learning for health, but at the focus group there was some discussion around the use of language. The way that information and questions are presented so that they're accurate and easy to understand for people who are neurodivergent. And there were people at the focus group, like yourself, speaking from a personal perspective of that, saying that if it's not presented in the right way then it just makes you really cross. You just don't want to engage because it frustrates you that you can't just get on with the work if you like.

V5: Yes. It's actually pain for the brain. I’m not even joking. It's actually painful.

TA: That that was a very clear message, so it's not just about being supported by having access to things but by having access to things that are accessible in the sense of being accessible to a range of people with different perspectives really. So that is really important. And those two points at the bottom were just about educators specifically wanting to actually know about Creative Commons licencing, to use open education resources, which is why I changed the language. They're not using them because they get worried about the licencing. There’s this fact about educators and always needing to work and need to feel supported to use different contemporary apps, and things like TikTok, because our students are often learning now in a very quick video message or something like that. That was part of feeling supported as well, so it was about physical support, technical support, cognitive support and just general support that's tailored so that they can actually think about using these things, if it's appropriate. So, in general, you can see some meaning in that slide? Can you kind of understand that category?

V5: Yes. To be fair, maybe those reasons. I've got to do a little with a digital human and it's a fantastic resource online, but it's so difficult to understand how to retrieve the resources within that platform. It's fine if you have the time but when you don't have the time and you feel that time pressure it just makes your experience so much worse than if. I wouldn't say it is engaged, because maybe I don’t give up easily but I suspect that a lot of other people would give up, simply because it's not an easy resource to navigate, right? And I do wonder how many other online resources we have that that people don't find it easy to navigate. You know, they require a training session just to access the platform, which doesn't make it helpful. And I think that this thing goes back actually to accessibility because it should be so much more user friendly for you to be able to use without having to have training, if that makes sense. Because let's face it, it's difficult to offer the training. It's difficult to have the time off to go to that training. You're going there to get trained. You can't get to the training to get trained, you know what I mean? It will be like so much complicated and it will be exhausting! 

TA: Yes, and you're doing all that alone.

V5: Yes, exactly. Without even saying that not everything is in one place. So, if you have this many resources [hands spread apart to illustrate breadth of resources] that are all requiring you to develop a skill to access them, it becomes really frustrating and I guess defeating.

TA: Yes. Okay, thank you. I think you alluded earlier that actually having some resources and things available is supportive in its own sense. That was something that came up at the focus group which was a new kind of perspective, but it relates to that as well. And then the last category was about having time and space for learning, and I'm actually going to change just to having protected time and space for learning, because basically you need a really strong infrastructure of technology and the Internet, but also time and space where you can actually be uninterrupted as well. And the reality is people don't have time to independently research free online learning resources. They'll go to somewhere where they know they're going to get something quick and easy. And like you said, you'll return to somewhere that was accessible. If there was somewhere that had resources that were accessible you'll go back there, because you'll know that you'll probably relate to those more easily and not waste time.

V5: I don't know. It's not just about, I think for me it wouldn't be just about the actual protected time in that moment, but you need some time. So, for example, if you like to take notes or have to do mathematic after that, you need some focused time at the end of the session. But also, what I found useful, so for example, there are some of the online trainings that you can’t download the slides so you have to watch a video. By watching the video you can't take any notes, so that means that you need to write your own notes somewhere else, you need to open them and you need to organise. So, these require your extra time, if you can't do it here and there. Not everyone is able to find the strategy. Maybe somebody who is not very IT savvy wouldn't be able to find an effective strategy in taking notes while you're going along. Not everybody will be able to multitask at the same time, so they might need the time afterwards to work.

TA: Yes. and I think that was something that came up in the interviews and here as well, about how it's natural for us in the university to give extra time for people who we acknowledge have additional learning requirements, but that doesn't take into account people's different learning styles in general, or the fact that they need space to process information and often it's about more than fact. It's more than fact finding or fact building, and it's only when you go into practice that it starts to become meaningful really. So, you need that time to process it and take it into practice as well. You need that time and space in order to, with support to process the learning and discuss it with somebody else in order to make it relevant and meaningful really.

V5: Yes, yes. Absolutely.

TA: Yeah. So do you feel that category makes some kind of sense? You've given me some extra examples, which is really helpful.

V5: Yes. Absolutely.

TA: Excellent. And then that brings the end to the categories. Thank you for your time.
