Lemmens The Virtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education Bernd Wächter (ed.) Aca papers on International Cooperation in Education The V irtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education

Nursing and IT: A Nordplus network.
International collaboration through net-based 
distance education
Education is one of the most important elements we bring to the future. With
more advanced technology the world has become smaller and our everyday
life has become exposed to multicultural streams. Technology is about to
fade out distances, making international collaboration easier, which is of
utmost importance. Traditional education and teaching, where students come
to college after high school and move on to graduate school thereafter, is no
longer the dominant reality. Students today are older, many of them already
have work experience. But they feel the need to acquire new skills to meet
the demands of a changing workplace. To have to move a family over a long
distance in order to obtain an education is difficult. Traditional classroom edu-
cation, with one-way teaching, is not suitable for these students. To be able
to sit down at home, to go to the nearest computer lab, turn on the TV in the
videoconference centre at school, share ideas with classmates in a country
next to yours or across the Atlantic Ocean, and discuss relevant nursing
issues with them, is a more appropriate learning form for them.
The above description reflects a few achievements of the joint course “Infor-
matics in Nursing and Health Care” of the universities of Iowa (US), Iceland
(Reykjavik), Oslo (Norway) and Örebro (Sweden), held in the spring semes-
ter of 2000. Distance learning with advanced telecommunications technology
made the course possible. This included live two-way videoconferences, 
e-mail contact, WWW-based interaction, and in-class communication bet-
ween students and students and teachers in four countries at the same time.
International collaboration can lead to various results, some foreseen, others
not. When a new master’s degree programme in nursing was established at
the University of Iceland in autumn 1998, collaboration was sought with Dr.
Connie Delaney, Associate Professor of nursing at the University of Iowa,
USA, for a course in nursing informatics. Dr. Delaney is a leader in the field
of health informatics with considerable experience in distance education.
Prior to the course described here, her experience with distance education
had, however, been more or less limited to the State of Iowa.
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in collaboration with Conny Delaney, College of Nursing, University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA; Margareta
Ehnfors, Örebro University, Sweden; and Cornelia Ruland, University of Oslo, Norway.

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In the beginning, Delaney and Thoroddsen intended the course to satisfy the
University of Iceland’s need for informatics content for its new master’s pro-
gramme in nursing and the University of Iowa College of Nursing’s desire to
develop international clinical research and teaching opportunities. In discus-
sions with colleagues from Sweden and Norway, Dr. Margareta Ehnfors and
Dr. Cornelia Ruland, it became evident that an interest in this kind of course
and experience was wider. A network between the four schools was there-
fore established.