Net based courses "Learn dementia with Broadband" are now a reality!

The participants at the course are 20 health care workers that comes from 3 municipalities in eastern Norway; Bøler bydel in Oslo, Nøtterøy and Horten. The participants have multidisciplinary backgrounds. They all work with people with dementia at nursing homes, at home care services, and home based care.

For the course to be accomplished, it requires that the participants have access to broadband. The content of the course is represented, among other things, with the use of video with appurtenant role playing. Professional actors have been used in making of these videoes, and they fabricate genuine problems that next of kind to people with dementia has experienced. Professionals from, among other things, the National Centre of Competence for old-age dementia has contributed to the content of the different modules, and they contribute in discussion groups and chat. Text, animations, freeze frames, links, news, and discussion groups are represented at the website. The participants are expected to actively take part and make use of different tools for interaction and collaboration.

The health care workers shall make use of problem-solving learning (PBL) as a work method, and they are required to hand in papers, both individually papers and group work. The participants shall, in addition to working at the Internet, also put to use videoconferencing equipment, and participate at personal meetings.

The training programme for the participants was started April 28^th - 29^th at the computer-lab at the University of Vestfold. The enthusiasm was great when everyone had discussions at the net! We are anxiously watching the follow-up of the course that are set to run in four modules; two before the summer and to after the summer. The course shall now be tested for the first time, and the evaluation will carefully be gone through before it can be offered to every health care worker in Norway.

Do you need more information? Look at our website at the Internet: "Learn dementia with broadband" for more information, or contact Zoltan Tot, Trond Kristiansen or Rigmor Furu at the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine.

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