Context: Alzheimer's and dementia are growing health and social care issues right across Europe. As the proportion of older people in European societies increases, so too does the likelihood of ever increasing numbers of people with the disease. Family carers already provide care and support for loved ones with dementia. It is important that family members providing care to loved one's with dementia receive appropriate education and training so that they can carry out their caring duties effectively. Objectives: We will develop, deliver, evaluate and refine a blended learning training programme to support family carers looking after a loved one with dementia. The emphasis on this course is on later stage dementia care. This will require the production of two intellectual outputs: the course syllabus and the preferred blended delivery model. Both intellectual outputs will be piloted and tested during the project and adjustments made based on user feedback. Participants: 40 family carers will take part in the pilot courses. Staff from The Alzheimer Society of Ireland (5), Ic Dien (5) and Flexible Education Norway (2) will directly and actively participate in the production of the intellectual outputs. They will be joined by (2) adult learners who will contribute their experience to the development of the outputs. Activities: The production of the intellectual outputs will involve the establishment of the Syllabus Development and the Delivery Development Groups. Their tasks will be to research the content and structure of the course, oversee the delivery of the first pilot course, gather feedback from learners and tutors, assess the feedback, on the basis of this assessment make adjustments to course syllabus and delivery structure for a second pilot course, deliver second pilot course and gather feedback from learners and tutors , assess this feedback and make adjustments for the final course structure and content. Methodology: will be based on Honey and Mumford's 4 stage learning cycle. This will allow us to deploy an iterative approach to course development and delivery. The result of the project will be a freely available, high quality and user-friendly course to support family carers looking after a loved one in later stage dementia. Results and Impact: we would expect 40 learners to have received a high quality blended training course during the project leading to a more confident and skilled set of family carers. In addition, we would expect 20 organisations to sign up to use the Blended Learning Handbook at our Multiplier event in May 2020. The impact of the course on learners will be measured in 'before and after' questionnaires which will demonstrate the additional skills and confidence gained as a result of their training. Longer-term benefits will include a higher and more effective level of in-home dementia care and a higher numbers of family carers continuing to deliver care at home for longer. In addition there should be a greater likelihood for care organisations to deliver online or blended training courses. Finally, we would expect a greater understanding among educationalists around how to structure a blended learning programme based on the needs and requirements of learners.
Context: Alzheimer's and dementia are growing health and social care issues right across Europe. As the proportion of older people in European societies increases, so too does the likelihood of ever increasing numbers of people with the disease. Family carers already provide care and support for loved ones with dementia. It is important that family members providing care to loved one's with dementia receive appropriate education and training so that they can carry out their caring duties effectively. During the project, the outbreak of COVID-19 led to increased isolation for people with dementia and their family carers. Objectives: We developed, delivered, evaluated and refined a blended learning training programme to support family carers looking after a loved one with dementia. The emphasis of this course is on later stage and end of life dementia care. We produced two outputs which are available as open education resources: the blended learning course called Later Stage Dementia Care - Blended Learning for Families available at https://dementia-care-downloads.moodlecloud.com/course/view.php?id=6; and a Blended Learning Handbook for educators or others interested in finding out more about developing and delivering a blended learning programme to adult learners. This is available to view and download at: https://fleksibelutdanning.no/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Handbook-Later-Stage-Dementia-Care-Blended-Learning-for-Families-PDF.pdf Participants: 57 family carers took part in the 4 pilot courses we delivered over the lifetime of the project (target was 40). Staff from The Alzheimer Society of Ireland (6), Ic Dien (5) and Flexible Education Norway (1) participated in the production of the intellectual outputs. They were joined by 4 adult learners who provided feedback on early drafts of the learning outcomes for the blended learning course. Activities: The production of the intellectual outputs involved establishment of a small group of tutors who worked together on the development of the blended learning course. They researched existing programmes in terms of content and structure of the course, they delivered the first pilot course. The project coordinator and administration staff gathered feedback from learners and tutors. This feedback was assessed, and on the basis of this assessment adjustments were made to course syllabus and delivery structure for a second pilot course. The second pilot course was delivered and again we gathered feedback from learners and tutors, assessed this feedback and make adjustments for the final course structure and content. Methodology: we used David Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle as the basis for the methodology guiding this project. This allowed us to deploy an iterative approach to course development and delivery. The result of the project will be a freely available, high quality and user-friendly course to support family carers looking after a loved one in later stage dementia. Results and Impact: 57 learners received a high-quality blended training course during the project leading to a more confident and skilled set of family carers. We were joined by 24 external participants at our Multiplier Event (target figure at time of application was 20). We would hope that some of them would find the Blended Learning Handbook a useful resource.