What is a Living Classroom?
Healthcare education is best when it’s lived. The Living Classroom (LC) model integrates student learning directly into long-term care (LTC) homes, fostering a community where everyone, from faculty to families, learns from one another. This collaboration cultivates highly skilled and compassionate graduates who are ready to commit to a fulfilling career in long-term care.
Learn how students, LTC homes and team members, educators, residents, and families benefit from the unique Living Classroom model in this explainer video.
The Living Classroom extends the educational and workforce capacity of both post-secondary educators (PSEs) and LTC homes to meet the increasing and evolving workforce needs for personal support workers (PSWs).
The LC addresses four important public policy objectives that are foundational to all PSEs and LTC homes:
Access
Living Classrooms increase student enrolment in healthcare programs by bringing education closer to prospective students and, in some instances, by locating programs within communities that may not have an existing campus or post-secondary education program.
Education capacity
Living Classrooms enhance capacity in LTC homes and PSEs by demonstrating the value of teaching and learning in these settings. The LC promotes continuous learning among existing LTC teams and faculty, fostering the sharing of best practices and evidence-based care through student-team interactions.
Workforce capacity
Living Classroom programs graduate more PSWs interested in working in LTC by creating new opportunities for beneficial interactions with residents and families and by fostering a life-learning environment within LTC for students and team members.
Quality and sustainability
A Living Classroom cultivates the skills students need to prepare them for careers working with older adults and provides opportunities to develop and share new approaches to experiential learning in LTC homes. A primary goal is to graduate individuals with enhanced motivation to become contributors and change agents for continual improvement in senior care.