How to design and set an effective practice sharing?

STEP 1 - Premises

If you want to offer innovative courses for Family and Community Nurses, it is recommended that you consider adopting active and collaborative learning approaches. This way, along with traditional teaching methods (such as lectures) that are aimed to tackle theoretical aspects, practical sessions are also proposed.
Practical sessions could include:

    • Collaborative learning approaches and practice sharing activities, where students are divided in groups and are proposed team work with different strategies, such as for example case study, problem based learning, role-play, etc.
    • Laboratory sessions, where role-play and simulations are proposed. Simulations are used to help students getting familiar with technical skills (how to measure blood pressure, etc.) when you are at “entry” nursing educational level (bachelor), or with relational and communication skills when you are at the FCN level.
    • Work based learning: whilst encompassing a broad range of activities and activity types, however, it is accepted that work-based learning centres on the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competences through action-based or reflective learning in a vocational or occupational context. These might include various forms, such as apprenticeship, stage, internship and others, depending on national rules and training contexts.

This Guide focuses on how to effectively set up and offer collaborative learning approaches and practice sharing activities.

STEP 2 – Design of collaborative learning and practice sharing activities


Collaborative learning approaches valorize the single learner’s experience through practice sharing and peer discussion, so to support the co-construction of new knowledge. Strategies, such as discussions, peer review activities, case studies, role-plays, problem based learning activities, jigsaws, etc. should be used to promote practice sharing and the development of the community dimension.

In case you want to propose collaborative learning activities within your courses for Family and Community Nurses, teachers should carefully design them (micro-design). Moreover, teachers should also allow students to be pro-active in proposing topics for discussion, exchange and collaboration among peers.

STEP 3 – Teacher training for practice sharing


If you want to support practice sharing and collaborative learning approaches within your courses for Family and Community Nurses, you should make sure your perspective teachers are able to propose meaningful collaborative learning activities. This might imply to train teachers (at least) on the following aspects:

    • What competencies / learning outcomes can meaningfully be addressed by collaborative learning approaches?
    • What collaborative learning techniques /methods exist and better apply to the competencies /learning outcomes to be addressed?
    • How to effectively design a collaborative learning activity? How component should be considered (task, time, team, technology)
    • How to effectively support students during the activity and how to orchestrate the learning environment?
    • How to monitor and evaluate the learning process and how to assess students at the end of a collaborative learning activity?


STEP 4 – e-learning for practice sharing

If you want to support practice sharing within your courses for Family and Community Nurses, you could consider relying on e-learning or blended learning approaches. This will allow your learners to take the most from the collaborative learning strategies, by taking also advantage of distance learning to guarantee flexibility to your course participants that could access materials and courses at their own pace and availability.

If you decide to rely on e-learning or blended approaches to support collaborative learning activities in your courses for Family and Community Nurses, you should rely on an adequate technological and organizational infrastructure.

To get indications on the technological features, go to STEP 5
To get indications on the methodological and organizational issues, you can access:
Brasher, A., Whitelock, D., Holmes, W. Pozzi, F. Manganello, F., Passarelli, M. Persico, D. Taulats, M. Carrillo, A. (2018). Guidelines to improve the performance of online institutions. CODUR Project - IO2-A3.

STEP 5 – Technological features for practice sharing

If you decide to rely on e-learning or blended approaches to support collaborative learning activities in your courses for Family and Community Nurses, you should check that the learning environment you choose supports the following features:

    • Wikis, forums, groups, etc. as these functionalities will allow teachers (and students themselves) to propose collaborative learning activities
    • Social networking functionalities as the community dimension is very important in collaborative learning. Optionally, you could even suggest (or offer) an informal social media for your course participants to interact outside the boundaries of the ‘formal course’
    • Functionalities able to support self-regulated learning, as this component is critical in collaborative learning, especially if this is proposed at a distance. This implies offering tools and methods to support autonomy, self- monitoring, planning and self-evaluation abilities
    • Gamification functionalities to support participants’ motivation and engagement in the learning process. In particular, it would be advisable to use digital badges with the aim to represent levels of competence achieved, to support the assessment of levels of Learning Outcomes achieved, and to show skills and competences gained through different experiences for the professional profile.
    • “Adaptive’ or ‘intelligent’ systems featured with learning analytics and recommending functionalities, in such a way that learners are proposed courses and materials depending on their previous learning outcomes and are supported as far as meta-cognition and self-regulated learning are concerned. This will also prevent dropout

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Last modified: Friday, 30 April 2021, 6:45 PM