Blended Learning in Practice

Ethics education is now accepted as an important and integral part of programmes that lead to student’s registration as health professionals. Despite this, there is wide variation in philosophical and pedagogical approaches, resulting in mixed experiences for students who may be alienated by traditional methods and left unable to see the practical real world applicability of ethics to their future clinical practice. This paper examines the use of an alternative, values based approach using ethical decision making software (the Values Exchange) to achieve a student-centred learning approach to ethics education. Drawing from student-centred theory, lecturer experience and data from students who have shared their experiences of using the Values Exchange, the potential of the software to facilitate deep learning, and critical and informative reflection resulting in confident decision makers who can apply their learning to future practice is explored. 5 key words: Student centred-learning, ethics, education, health professionals, values.