The Department of Health’s digital strategy (2012) recognised the growing role of technology and aimed to give staff ‘the knowledge, skills, permission and confidence to embrace digital opportunities to deliver better health, better care and better value for all’.

Since the strategy was published the pace of change in technology means that there are even more options for technology enhanced learning (TEL) in healthcare.

TEL covers a broad range of tools, resources and approaches that can help us to develop and improve our practice and services. Massive open online courses (MOOCs), e-learning packages, virtual learning environments, simulation, gamification, webinars, podcasts,discussion forums, online videos, apps, tweetchats, Facebook groups, and much more. There is wide recognition of the many benefits and opportunities that technology can bring to healthcare professionals’ education, training and CPD. In addition to this many TEL resources are free for the user, so at a time of pressurised CPD budgets they can help us fit learning flexibly around our personal development plans, professional interests and work objectives.

Despite this there are significant barriers that get in the way of healthcare students and workers accessing many of the learning technologies and resources that are available. These barriers can be the result of factors including local policy, infrastructure and skills plus the pressure of time and delivering healthcare in times of limited resource. Some relate to human factors, others to technological constraints. Some of the most common barriers are:

• Digital skills and willingness to embrace technology in learning
• Time to carry out CPD
• Local policies that restrict or ban use of personal devices at work
• Local firewall constraints, for examples blocking of social media sites
• Out of date or not fit-for-purpose software and hardware, such as outdated versions of Internet Explorer or lack of video and audio cards
• Legacy content not kept up-to-date for later formats, hardware etc
• Poor internet connectivity, either wired or wireless, and insufficient bandwidth
• Information Governance restrictions on use of cloud based services such as Google Docs.

Do you use technology to help you learn? Do you or your colleagues have the skills or even the time to learn online? What is your experience of learning using technology? This tweetchat is being held in collaboration with Health Education England’s Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme Team (@HEE_TEL). We will be exploring some of the barriers healthcare students and staff experience learning through different technologies, and what some of the simple solutions might be for developing easy, equitable, cost effective and innovative use of learning technologies and techniques. 

Some questions to think about before the chat:

1. What technology do you use as part of your learning and development?
2. Do you recognise some of the barriers listed above, and any additional ones, that impact on your ability to carry out technology enhanced learning activities?
3. Do you think human factors or technological factors are the most difficult to overcome?
4. What might be some solutions to some of the current challenges in accessing technology enhanced learning?
5. How do we ensure that our TEL activities meet the needs of our employer, patients and service-users, and professional regulators - as part of a planned approach to learning,development and CPD?

Useful resources

• Government Digital Strategy (2012) 
• DH– A Framework for Technology Enhanced Learning (2011)
• Health Education England’s Technology Enhanced Learning Programme 

Expert Panel