Pioneering a universal curriculum: a look at six disciplines involved in women's health care.

This paper describes a multidisciplinary project of curriculum development and implementation at one university. Universal learning concepts for six health care disciplines in women's health, including nurse-midwifery, are being piloted in an online classroom environment. This multidisciplinary team approach to education distributes the work load, invites experts to share resources, and avoids the duplication of resources across the university departments and schools.

Reusable learning units: an innovative teaching strategy for online nursing education.

Constructivist and adult learning theory provided the theoretical framework for reusable learning units (RLUs) developed for a Southeastern University's family nurse-practitioner and nurse-midwifery distance educational programs. Reusable learning units are an organized series of learning events that satisfy one or more interrelated learning objectives that cannot be broken down to component parts without losing semantic and pragmatic meaning. This paper describes the conceptual framework, background and history of RLUs, and collaborative efforts for development and implementation.