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. 2022 Dec;16(6):641-650.
doi: 10.1177/20494637221116560. Epub 2022 Aug 3.

Educating and engaging a new target audience about the problem of pain for society

Elizabeth Devonshire  1 , Stella Dodds  1 , Daniel Costa  2 , Rebecca Denham  3 , Kylie Fitzgerald  4   5 , Carl R Schneider  6
Affiliations

Educating and engaging a new target audience about the problem of pain for society

Elizabeth Devonshire et al. Br J Pain. 2022 Dec.

Abstract

Background: Pain education initiatives are typically targeted at health professionals, with less attention being placed on the education of other target audiences. Recent curriculum changes across undergraduate liberal studies degree programs at The University of Sydney presented an opportunity to develop an online course entitled Health Challenges: Pain and Society, which was aimed at a non-traditional target audience. To promote student engagement about the problem of pain for society, the course was designed using the Community of Inquiry framework. Research Design: This paper reports on an Educational Design Research study, investigating the effectiveness of the course in engaging students across two cohorts, in 2019 and 2020. Data Collection: Learning analytics were collected from the Learning Management System each year. The level of student engagement in non-assessable tasks was measured using multiple linear regression. Students' degree type and majors were recorded. In 2020, the quality of student workbook responses was recorded. Results: In both cohorts, engagement with the workbooks was a predictor of academic achievement. In 2020, a significant interaction effect between quantity and quality of engagement was observed. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of designing online learning to facilitate successful engagement for non-traditional target audiences about the issue of chronic pain for society.

Keywords: chronic pain; community of inquiry; educational design research; online learning; pain education; student engagement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
(a). Degree ASCED for 2019 and 2020 cohort. 01 = Natural and Physical Sciences; 02 = Information Technology; 07 = Education; 08 = Management and Commerce; 09 = Society and Culture (b) Major ASCED classification for 2019 and 2020 cohort. 01 = Natural and Physical Sciences; 02 = Information Technology; 05 = Agriculture, Environmental and Related Studies; 06 = Health; 07 = Education; 08 = Management and Commerce; 09 = Society and Culture; 10 = Creative Arts.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Simple slopes analysis on quantity and quality interaction.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
(a) 2019 mean engagement and correlations with final grades (b) 2020 mean engagement, and correlations with final grades.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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