West Virginia Rural Health Education Partnerships
LRC Committee Meeting

September 14, 1998

Attendees: Parr Thacker, Robert Blake, Cecil Pollard, Alex Yohn, Mark Allen, Arnie Hassen, Hilda Heady, April Vestal, Mike McCarthy, Suresh Kamath

Parr opened the meeting by thanking Alex for the handouts

"To design and support the LRC’s for the program."

Cecil commented that in the past we have had library input and asked if we could benefit from it now.

Arnie discussed his thinking on the various models of education and electronic networking. Professional educators are now using technologies more and are pushing the technical leadership. People delivering the program need to drive the process of the use of technologies with the educational models.

Mission

The mission is to guide and support the application of technology to the WVRHEP program.

Field Faculty member from Rainelle introduced and expressed his concern that the LRC’s were too far away from the learning moment that occurs in the patient exam room. The LRC’s are not physically accessible to students when they need them, i.e. after hours, weekends, etc.

Mark asked, "Do we need to look at adding computers in student housing?"

A discussion took place regarding the mission statement and the need to include the oversight of bridging various uses of technology competencies of students, faculty and staff and defining training needs. Alex and Parr shared that they feel that the mission statement needs to include all learning resource uses of current LRC’s and future uses not just the application of technology.

The consensus of the group on the mission statement is to be broad enough to include learning resources beyond technology. The group decided on the following mission statement:

"The mission of this committee is to guide and support the use of learning resources including the application of technology to the WVRHEP program."

The guiding principles of this mission statement should include open sharing of information; cost efficiencies in dealing with time and distance; be student driven and user friendly; and involvement of campus and field faculties.

Amy suggested looking at more uses of the Web. Alex moved that web management be done by CONSULT. Mike McCarthy seconded the motion. Motion Carried.

Assessment needs = groups to assess students, field faculty, campus faculty, site coordinators, community members.

Arnie and Hilda suggested using focus groups as a process to assess these needs of all these groups and conduct these at the sites when possible and combined statewide focus groups done in a central location.

Parr suggested attendance at Field Faculty Day for the discussion roundtable on LRC technology needs.

Mark and Alex stated CONSULT’s efforts with site visits to all consortia for hardware and software assessments.

Parr and Amy discussed other groups from which to solicit input and membership.

Next meeting to follow up on CONSULT’s assessment and other focus groups available for assessment of needs.

Next meeting will be November 16th, 1998 from 12:30pm to 2:30pm at the Flatwood’s Days Inn, West Virginia.