Inaugural meeting of IVINURS

Around 50 delegates from the UK, USA, Hong Kong, Thailand, Norway, Canada and Iceland will be arriving in Edinburgh this month for the inaugural meeting of IVINURS, the International Virtual Nursing School.

The meeting will include a number of papers on key issues for IVINURS, including e-learning and nursing, blended learning and international collaboration. There will also be a number of technological demonstrations plus group work to discuss some of the feasibility issues with prospective partners.

The IVINURS project is being led by the Distance Learning Centre (Nursing and Palliative Care) at Tay Park House, and is a sister project to IVIMEDS (the International Virtual Medical School). The Centre offers distance learning nursing degree courses, which are highly respected internationally, and the IVINURS initiative is an example of the University of Dundee leading the way in innovative and high quality learning methods.

It is hoped that the inaugural meeting will result in around 10-15 nursing schools and professional institutions joining the project as founding partners and that Dundee will continue to play a leading role in the IVINURS organisation.

The IVINURS vision is of a web-based collaborative venture involving leading edge nursing schools, institutions and healthcare providers, offering local access to the best in nursing education worldwide. It is an initiative that recognises the growing trend towards the use of distance learning in nurse education, the emergence of the new e-learning technologies and a global consensus that nursing is a practice-based discipline. The venture will incorporate a combination of e-learning, distance learning and on-campus learning, giving access for students of partner nursing schools to a blended learning experience.