Active blended learning for clinical skills acquisition: innovation to meet professional expectations

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)'s draft framework for nursing and midwifery education states that a programme of study will only be approved if ‘students are empowered and provided with the learning opportunities they need in a range of settings, using a variety of methods to achieve the desired programme outcomes and NMC proficiencies’ (NMC, 2017: 4). This approach to learning and teaching is to ensure that student midwives are prepared to practise safely and effectively in line with the Code (NMC, 2015), and is supported by research suggesting that approved education institutions should adopt a wide range of strategies, such as keynote lectures, enquiry-based learning, simulation, and e-learning, to prepare students for the dynamic, unpredictable and complex environment of contemporary maternity services (Fraser et al, 2011).

There is ongoing debate in relation to how adults learn best, with the suggestion that the ‘learning styles’ pedagogical approach, which classifies students as visual, aural/auditory, read/write, or kinaesthetic learners (VAK or VARK) (Vark Learn Ltd, 2017), might limit rather than enhance the acquisition and retention of information (Power and Farmer, 2016). A topic-specific approach, adopting the most appropriate strategy for the topic or skill to be learned, rather than a learning-style-specific approach, which teaches according to the ‘preference’ of the learner as identified by a self-audit VAK/VARK test, may be an alternative.