The Alan Blizzard Award was established by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education to encourage, identify, and publicly recognize those whose exemplary collaboration in university teaching enhances student learning. McGraw-Hill Ryerson has sponsored this STLHE Award from its inception in 2002. STLHE is pleased to announce that this year’s recipients of the Alan Blizzard Award are the nine members of the collaborative team from the University of Ottawa and St. Paul University—Peter Barnes, Susan Brajtman, Brad Genereaux, Pippa Hall, Daniel Mroz, Patti O’Brien, Beckie Walbourne (Tingley), Lynda Weaver, and Tim Willett. This team and project were selected for “Complex care, complex issues: innovations in development and content for effective team learning online.” Inter-professional education (IPE) is a response to the need for more effective, collaborative, patient-centred teamwork in health care today. Preparing students who will be able to demonstrate effective collaborative person-centred practice has proved challenging. Among the challenges are scheduling common learning times across curricula and designing programs to meet needs of different learners. Through a wider collaboration with students, community-based clinicians and faculty from several faculties at the University of Ottawa and Saint Paul University, an online learning module was developed. The dynamic, faculty-facilitated module uses a patient narrative to portray a terminally ill patient experiencing a complex combination of physical, psychosocial and spiritual issues (“suffering”). The collaboration involved students as well as academic, clinical and technological experts to develop the engaging story, educational methodology and innovative online interface. This online learning module combines independent and group learning activities to address common and profession-specific learning objectives. The module is based on collaborative learning in inter-professional teams. The foundations for the module are built upon theoretical frameworks from social sciences, online learning as well as principles of androgogy. An overview of this outstanding collaborative project can be found at the Total Pain website. The 2009 Alan Blizzard Award team will receive the Award and make a presentation on the collaborative project at the upcoming STLHE 29th Annual Conference to be held at the University of New Brunswick, June 17-20, 2009.
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