Partner projects

Ethiopia (2022-2027)

Between 2022 and 2027, an Ethiopian PhD student will develop an ePortfolio to better guide the learning process of PhD students. This will happen in the framework of a VLIR-UOS project between Ghent University and several universities in Ethiopia. The title of the project is "Interuniversity collaboration for quality graduate education and research in Ethiopia". Prof. Bruno Levecke had invited us to participate in this project. He was inspired during a VLIR-UOS presentation about the Rwanda e-Portfolio project that was realised between 2017 and 2020 by the Arteveldehogeschool, midwifery department and the University in Rwanda. Read more about it here. You can find the research poster below.

On 17/10, the Kick-off meeting of IQ-GEAR took place. Under wide interest, the 4 subprojects were presented. The SCAFFOLD project is part of the first subproject, which focuses on the PhD competences and programme. We will take on the ePortfolio component. During this first week, we developed a project plan and drafted the vacancy for a female PhD student. The intention is that this researcher can start 1/1/2023. A solid network has already been built over the past decades, the intention is to expand the network and SCAFFOLD would like to contribute to that.

WSE: training of the future within the Healthcare theme

This project focuses on the development of a number of training courses in HEALTH. The healthcare and broad care and welfare sector in Flanders is in transformation. The demand for (health) care is increasing and shifting from acute, short-term care to chronic, long-term (home) care in a highly fragmented and often high-tech digital care landscape. This trend requires:

1.  Digital skills of healthcare providers at all levels to enable interdisciplinary collaboration across first, second and third-line care (subtheme 1)
2. Knowledge of available (emerging) healthcare technologies to maintain quality of care (subtheme 2)
3. Psychosocial skills to ensure the agility of healthcare providers in a landscape facing labour shortages and high burnout risks (subtheme 3)

Within the first sub-theme 'digital skills of healthcare providers', we are developing a training programme to teach, monitor and assess the digital competences of bachelor-trained (future) professionals. The training will consist of 6 modules. One of them is professionalisation in which we will use the expertise developed in the scaffold ePortfolio project.

It will be developed by Lucie Van de Looverbosch and Mieke Embo (Arteveldehogeschool), Nina Callebaut (Odisee) and Padin Fazelian (Erasmus University College). After the project ends (Dec. 2023), the online module will be freely available to courses and employers. Those interested in learning more about this training programme can contact lucie.vandelooverbosch@arteveldehs.be .

Professional qualification framework for the midwife (2021)

Dr. Mieke Embo, project manager SCAFFOLD is a member of the Board of Directors of the Flemish Association of Midwives. As an expert she contributes to the development of the Flemish Professional Qualifications Framework for midwives. This process is led by Ms. Inge Biot, education advisor of the Flemish government (AHOVOKS-Agency for Higher Education, Adult Education, Qualifications and Study Grants; Qualifications and Curriculum Department).

SCAFFOLD - Uganda: an ePortfolio project in Uganda to optimize workplace learning in healthcare education (2022)

From 1-21/08/2022 we welcomed Betty Masengere from Uganda for a short research stay. The goal of this stay was to write a research proposal. You can find the abstract of this Global Minds project below:

Global disparities in the quantity, distribution, and skills of health workers worldwide pose a threat to the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and deepens already existing global health inequities (World Health organization [WHO] & Global health Workforce Alliance, 2014). Uganda and other low-resource countries face a critical shortage of health professionals, particularly nurses and midwives. Currently, continuing education is undertaken as a full time course, that requires the health workers to leave their stations of duty in order to study. This not only disadvantages their work stations and patients, it has also led to loss of jobs and crowding in the few clinical placement areas as learners try to achieve their clinical rotation goals that are actually graded in logbooks. The covid 19 pandemic grossly affected educational progress in Uganda but awoke many to the possibilities of embracing learning and assessment via technology as was evidenced by most educational institutions in Uganda.

This research project aims to contribute to the capacity building plans of the international and Ugandan government by developing an ePortfolio strategy that improves the quality of clinical education and advances research in healthcare education. The targeted output of this Short Research Stay (August 2022) is a research proposal that will be ready for submission. The ambition of our visitor is to apply for a Phd study. This project is connected with the SBO-FWO SCAFFOLD project “ePortfolios to scaffold workplace learning in healthcare education

Keywords: ePortfolio, competence, workplace learning, healthcare education, Uganda, educational design research (EDR)

Partners: Uganda Nurses And Midwives Examinations Board/ Lubaga Hospital Training School

Scholarship from service club Soroptimist International to Clare Mukomuzibu, Makerere University Uganda.

Midwife Clare Mukomuzibu received an "SIE Scholarship Funding" of 4,000 Euros during the above project to complete her studies. Clare is a midwife and coordinator of midwifery training at Lubaga Nurses training school in Kampala, Uganda. Clare was a partner in the digital portfolio project with Rwanda and had long aspired to get a master's degree. Thanks to this funding, she will be able to study the "Master in Educational Technology and distance learning" course at Makerere University in Kampala. Based on her ambition to implement the digital portfolio in her course, she works out assignments around this theme to the maximum. She can make maximum use of the results of the scaffold project. The professors of her course are also interested in collaborating further. The application was written by the club Soroptimist Scaldilys Ghent, of which Mieke is a member.

VLIR/UOS: International & Digital Workplace Learning Network: the first step!

Global disparities in quantity, distribution and skills of health workers pose a threat to attainment
of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Rwanda and other middle- and low-income
countries face a critical shortage of health professionals, such as midwives.

VLIR/UOS funded a two year project (2018-2019) between the University of Rwanda (UoR) and the
Artevelde University of Applied Sciences in Ghent, Belgium. This project aimed to contribute the
government plans to increase capacity by improving the quality of midwifery clinical education.
The project team conducted two qualitative studies to explore if the competency-based
continuous workplace learning model (Embo et al., 2015) and the e-portfolio (Medbook) were
feasible for clinical education in Rwanda.

What was the result of the pilot study?
All students, mentors and supervisors who participated in the pilot study at the University of
Rwanda prefer a digital or e- portfolio above a paper-based portfolio. An e-portfolio can support
midwives’ competency development but an adapted design and an affordable (open source)
platform are needed to build a sustainable digital e-portfolio in developing countries.

The success of the development and implementation of e-portfolio depends worldwide on the essential
underlying conditions. The most important are: training of e-portfolio users, internet and devices, time, insights in competency-based education and support from the managers at the workplace
and the educational institutions, as well as from regulators and policy.

More info via : mieke.embo@arteveldehs.be or mieke.embo@ugent.be

You can read the open source article here.

You can download the secons publication below.

The presentation of the project at the Care4 conference can also be watched below.