Innovations in Nursing Education: The State of the Art

Intentional learning: a student-centered pedagogy

Objective The objective was to test the assumption that characteristics of intentional learning are not fixed and if an interview assignment enhanced intentional learning. Methods In order to meet the needs of practice, nursing educators have trialed student-centered pedagogies, often with resistance from students. Intentional learning appears to mirror the characteristics, such as autonomy, responsibility of one's own learning, self-regulation, and motivation, needed by students to be successful in student-centered pedagogies. Intentional learning had not been studied in nursing. A quasi-experimental pre/post-test design was used to test intentional learning in nursing students (N=92). Results While the interview assignment did not enhance intentional learning scores, intentional learning scores did significantly increase over the semester (p=0.039). Conclusion Intentional learning scores did increase, showing that students move along the intentional learning continuum depending on their learning experiences. Future research should include testing teaching strategies that foster intentional learning.

Challenge Based Learning nurtures creative thinking: An evaluative study

BACKGROUND

The demand for more creative and innovative nurses and together with the rapid expansion of nurse education in Mainland China have called for new approaches to student learning. Challenge Based Learning, an active student-directed approach was incorporated into an elective course in an undergraduate nursing programme. Initially, the students were given some big ideas about the real world. They worked together in small groups to identify the most challenging problems from these ideas, develop some innovative solutions, formulate an action plan for a selected solution, carry out the actions and evaluate the outcome.

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the effectiveness of Challenge Based Learning on students' creativity and innovativeness.

DESIGN

Quasi-experimental.

SETTINGS

A medical university in Guangzhou, China.

METHOD AND PARTICIPANTS

A convenience sample of 48 undergraduate nursing students from the bilingual class, who enrolled in the elective course, Innovation and Creative Thinking was invited to participate in the evaluative study. They completed the Creativity and Innovation Effectiveness Profile before and after the course.

RESULTS

Apart from descriptive statistics, the mean scores of the Creativity and Innovation Effectiveness Profile between the pretest and posttest assessments were analyzed using the Wilcoxon signed ranks test. The results showed that the mean scores of all 7 domains (i.e. creative consciousness, levels of curiosity, pattern breaking skills, idea nurturing ability, willingness to experiment and take risks, courage and resilience and energetic persistence) of Creativity and Innovation Effectiveness were significantly higher in the posttest.

CONCLUSION

Students can enhance their ability to innovate and create through learning. The successful practical experience of using CBL in the study provides a good reference for nurse teachers who want their students to be self-directed, creative and innovative.

Virtual Patients in Health Professions Education

The field of health professions continues to struggle with the impact of increasing practitioner and educator shortages. Health professions education is also faced with the issues of limited clinical placements and an increasing demand for online education. To address these issues, health professions educators have increasingly turned to simulations to provide experiential learning in safe, controlled environments. One of the newest simulation technology innovations to emerge is that of virtual patient simulations. This chapter reviews the context in which virtual patients have emerged, the range of virtual patient technologies available, and the ways in which health professions educators currently use virtual patient simulations.

Social media in nursing education: responsible integration for meaningful use

The astonishing popularity of social media and its emergence into the academic arena has shown tremendous potential for innovations in teaching. The appeal of using social media in the learning environment is enhanced by accessibility and affordability. However, it has also broadened the scope of consideration for protecting student privacy. This article explores the legal impact of privacy concerns when social media is used as a teaching tool. Institutions of higher learning must formulate guidelines that will govern appropriate social media use so that novel teaching modalities can be safely explored. Students must be educated by faculty regarding the standards of conduct and privacy considerations related to social media. The National Council of State Boards of Nursing has issued the White Paper: A Nurse's Guide to the Use of Social Media, a must-read for nursing faculty in the current academic arena.