# 2.1 The learning environment

Part of your role as a Practice Supervisor/Practice Assessor will be to support and facilitate learning within a workplace. This workplace may vary significantly depending upon where you work.

However, all those supervising and/or assessing students must have an awareness of the learning environment in which students learn to maximise opportunities for student learning. This next activity encourages you to think about the learning environment.

## Activity 4

What might a ‘quality’ learning environment look or feel like?

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### Discussion

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (2019) state that:

> Effective learning places the student at the centre of the learning experience. Students are given the opportunities and space to take responsibility for their own learning, to seek out learning experiences and develop their own practice, without compromising public safety. The level or form of practice supervision can decrease or change with the student’s increasing proficiency and confidence.

> An effective learning environment is one which provides opportunities for meaningful learning experiences that contribute to a student meeting their learning outcomes. This can mean a variety of things depending on the student’s learning outcomes, their stage of learning, and the environment in which they are learning.

> An effective learning experience can take place across different environments, allowing students to learn and consolidate a set of skills across different settings and situations. Learning experiences should include the full spectrum of care relevant to the student’s area or field of practice.

> The culture within an effective learning environment values learning, and all people within the learning environment should understand their role in enabling learning.

> An effective learning experience also takes account of any equality and diversity considerations, or reasonable adjustments that need to be made to student learning and assessment.

Take a few minutes to reflect on this NMC statement (in the discussion above).

1. Do you agree with it?
2. Is there anything missing from it?
3. Were there issues you hadn’t considered?

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What might a ‘poor’ learning environment look or feel like?

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### Discussion

Conversely, you might have considered that aspects of a ‘poor’ learning environment could be, an area which:

- has an inadequately supportive learning culture
- does not address or meet the needs of students adequately
- offers a more critical than constructive learning culture
- neglects to provide feedback regularly, objectively or well
- lacks a team ethos and the potential for collaborative working is rare
- does not allow for adequate time for learning
- does not feel welcoming, inclusive or stimulating
- does not offer protected time with ‘educators’
- rarely celebrates success
- has limited evidence of effective leadership or management
- has poor morale among its staff

## Practice learning using a ‘long-arm’ approach

The NMC (2018) supports the use of tailored learning to meet learning outcomes and describes long-arm style learning as indirect supervision.

Read more about indirect supervision from the NMC by accessing the following links:

- Tailored learning
- The long-arm approach to placement supervision and assessment

OpenLearn - Practice supervision and assessment in nursing
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