Wednesday, October 22, 2014

A Letter to My Future Students



Dear future nursing students,

In your learning journey, I will be one these who will teach, encourage, instruct, mentor, influence, guide, and inspire you. Believe me it is all about you and your learning experience. It is the way you learn and it is about your performance and development. Instead of using a single teaching-learning method, I’ll use a variety of different types of methods that shifts my role from providing information to facilitating your learning. I believe that technology will provide me great teaching-learning methods that keep you active in classroom and enhance your learning. Technology is the key to transform nursing education.

This YouTube video what are my needs and your need in the 21st century; in the age of technology.  



In my the master program I had a Nursing Informatics course that has changed the way in which I view nursing education. Prior to the nursing informatics course, I was unaware of the technological advancements that can enhance the learning environment in classroom and clinical settings. Prior to the informatics course I didn’t know how to utilize all the technological knowledge and skills that I have to improve nursing education. Moreover, the informatics course supplied me with knowledge and skills that I believe will advance my teaching skills. The use of the latest technological advancements in teaching will create an interactive and innovative learning environment. You will be given the opportunity to develop both confidence and competence in providing safe, effective, efficient care to patients.


In the age of technology, every day there is something new to learn about. Nursing and health care are ever changing fields.  Because of that, learning for me is a lifelong process. To develop myself and to ensure creating and designing effective courses and deliver courses in an active learning environment, I have to keep my knowledge and skills up-to-date. By using technology, you will learn most accurate and up-to-date information to ensure patient care. In classroom and labs, we both are learners. We will learn together and we will use technology to make changes.    
Wish you all the best.

Sincerely,
Your nurse educator
Ohoud Al-Osais

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Nursing Informatics Competencies


Self-assessment tools help the users to discover what they are good at and where they may have to improve themselves. Nursing Informatics Competencies Self – Assessment let me discover my level in informatics. I believe that I’m at the modifier level and I have the courage to be at the innovator level. Before I start the nursing informatics course, I didn't know about many of technologies that can be used to improve health care. In this module I learned about Tele-health and Tele-nursing, and it was the first time to read about it. My interest in knowing more about Tele-health led me to read more and dive in it. This model led me to know a lot about my abilities in using technology, and more about my abilities in utilizing the skills that I have in discovering new technological tools. Nursing informatics provides me the opportunity to broaden my experience. Now, I’m confident about my knowledge regard HFPS, virtual worlds and second life, EHRs, and many other technologies.


There are many emerging technologies that will change nursing health care, as well as nursing education, in the coming years. I believe that technology is changing the world of healthcare. As a nurse educator, I have to keep my technological knowledge and skills up-to-date. Nursing informatics allows nursing educators to build a strong basis of knowledge in order to teach future and current nurses. As an educator, I have to keep up with the latest technologies and seek knowledge and skills development via attending conferences and workshops, reviewing research articles, and exploring the latest technologies in health care as well as education. The American Nursing Informatics Association is an association that focuses on the advance of the field of nursing informatics through communication, education, research and professional activities.



In order to facilitate the learning of nursing students to become technologically competent providers of nursing care, I have to start by identifying my abilities and strength and working on areas of knowledge I need to improve. In addition, I have to explore active teaching strategies to engage students in the learning, and stimulate the technological savvy person inside each of them. For instance, social media and social networking tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, play a role in the current education. As applying technology in nursing education continue to expand, I must adopt the usefulness and outcomes of technology integration. Here are 3 webpages enrich with technology tools that can be used to enhance both the educator’s and the student’s experience: 
  1. Teacher's Comprehensive List of Great Educational Technology Resources
  2. 50 Education Technology Tools Every Teacher Should Know About
  3. Technology in the Classroom: Resources for Teachers 




Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Feed Forward and Authentic Assessment



Authentic assessments demonstrate what students truly learn in class rather than the students’ abilities to get good grades on traditional tests and quizzes. Authentic assessments not only demonstrate learning, but provide learning as well. Educators can use these type of assessments to measure students’ performance and to see if the learning objectives were met. Authentic assessment promotes the learning process and assist students to gain knowledge while completing assignments that are helpful to get a real experience. Authentic assessments enable students show capability without the pressure of having an exam. I see this assessment tools as a great choice for students who suffer from test anxiety, or are not a good test-taker.


To improve students’ learning and enhance students’ performances in authentic assessment tasks or any other types of assessment tasks, the educator must provide timely, effective, specific feedback. Most of the times, feedback focuses on the past, rather than the future, and it is directed to what has already happened. Feed forward is feedback that is "forward looking"; it is a feedback that focus on the future. It allows educators and students to identify gaps in student learning, and help the students to fill in these gaps.  



As an educator, I would make sure that I use the appropriate type of assessments and provide feedback that is looking at what occurred in the past to change t in the future. There are many type of authentic tasks that can be used in the assessment of nursing students such as: discussion questions, wikis, blogs, and reflective journals. I would create methods to communicate feedback to help students get the benefit of the task as well as the feedback that identifies both the problem and the solution. There are many technological tools that I can use to provide audio or visual feedback. Voki is an example of a tool that I can use to provide audio feedback. Assessment tasks that I would like to use will help the nursing students to get a real-life experience and engage the students in their upcoming role as nurses.
Here is a webpage that includes learning activities that encourage students to use higher-order thinking skills, and help educators to use authentic assessment.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Interdisciplinary Learning and Collaboration with Technology


All health care disciplines work to accomplish the same goal which is patients’ health care. These disciplines must collaborate and share decision-making, and work together in designing patient’s health care. Collaboration between professions starts with interdisciplinary education and it is the way to provide a holistic health care. Nursing students must learn and practice effective communication methods, respect other health care disciplines, and cooperate with other disciplines in problem-solving and critical thinking.

The Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative is a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to support scholars from nursing and other disciplines to address gaps in knowledge about the relationship between nursing and health care quality. Bridging this gap will improve patient care and outcomes. 



Today, in the age of technology, health care professions have to be prepared to use technology to create effective, collaborate health care environment. Using technology in interdisciplinary education ensure the graduation of students who are "information literate" and able to use technology properly to share the decision in providing safe care. Also, using technologies, such as high fidelity patient simulation HFPS, in clinical teaching will improve the students’ problem solving and critical thinking skills. Also, technology will help students to gain a broader perspective of collaboration with other health care disciplines. In HFPS, the use of realistic situations, where nurses are communicating effectively and cooperating with other health care professions to provide care for the simulation mannequin, is developing the students’ psychomotor and affective skills which prepare them to provide a high quality of care that improves patient’s satisfaction, increases patient’s safety, and enhances patient’s outcomes. When health care professions learn how to collaborate to create a safe environment that will reduce medical errors, and impact staff engagement and satisfaction.



Here is a video about the experience of interdisciplinary simulation for nursing students and radiology students in Carolina Simulation Center:




Another example of interdisciplinary simulation centers is NorQuest Interdisciplinary Simulation Centre (NISC). NISC supports the integration of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and clinical judgment with experiential and reflective learning in an interdisciplinary, safe culture. In the NISC’s website there are scenarios and cases that can be used in HFPS. For practical nurses, they provide different scenarios in Acute Care Practice and Continuing Care Practice.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Creative Interactive Use of Technology in the Classroom


Nursing educators are challenged to provide high quality education for their students. They must reflect on their teaching methods and continue to improve the educational environment in order to achieve the best teaching outcome. One approach is to incorporate creative teaching strategies such as using technology to engage students and encourage them to participate to improve their learning experience. Technology has transformed nursing education and that required nursing educators to consider incorporating technology into traditional nursing classrooms as a mechanism to enhance students’ learning. When technology is used in teaching-learning strategies that would stimulate students’ critical thinking, facilitate students’ interaction, and promote student participation in the classroom, which allow students to be active learners. Technology enables nursing educators to create an environment of active, authentic, applied, experiential learning.



To be an effective nurse educator in the age of technology, I have to take advantage of the available technological resources to transform traditional teaching-learning strategies to be technological enhanced teaching-learning strategies. This will create the appropriate environment that encourage nursing students to actively participate in authentic assignments and be fully engaged in deep learning. In addition, most of technology-enhanced learning strategies and activities make nursing students use all their senses as well as their critical thinking skills. Also technology help nursing educators to connect the knowledge learned in classroom with the practicum and clinical, which I believe is essential to bridge the theory-practice gap and stimulate the students’ applied learning.



One of the method that could change the students’ learning experience in the classroom is serious games. This tool help the nursing educator to use simulation in classroom with no need to move to the a simulation lab. The technology of serious games promotes students’ learning using all their senses and stimulates students’ critical thinking. Also, since students can play these serious games using any web browser anywhere, that will motivate students to spend more time on tasks in order to mastering the skills. This tool will let nursing students practice in fear-free, harm-free environment to be prepared to work as professional nurses. The Serious Games Association website includes online resources that make using serious games in teaching more accessible for educators.   
Technology has changed many things in education. For sure things changed to be better. Technology facilitates teaching and learning which improved educators' and students' experiences. Technology enable educators to provide feedback to their students easier and faster. In the age of technology, the educator does not need to wait until her/his class time to meet with the students to provide them feedback on a submitted assignment. The educator can use different tools such as e-mail, Skype, or Voki to share their written and audio- visual comments.
An example of the successful use of technology in higher education is The University of Toledo which applied the technology of Echo360 Active Learning to improve the learning experience and lead students to success. Echo360 Active Learning is a technology that aims to change the education through blended learning solutions which designed to strengthen teaching-learning methods, promote student-teacher interaction, and improve student learning outcomes.


Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The Role of Nursing Educator in the 21st Century Age of Technology



In recent years, technology has merged with education to enhance the health care system. The role of nursing educator in the age of technology has changed. Nursing educators’ role is to facilitate, mentor, guide, and advice students during their learning experience. In the age of technology, nursing educators must encourage the students to be active learners who think critically and participate in deep learning. The focus of learning is shifted from teacher-centered to student-centered. The class time must be used efficiently by engaging students in learning activities to stimulate their active learning. I believe that some of the content required lecturing, yet that does not mean following traditional teaching style. For instance, the idea of flipped classroom can be used when the educator want to introduce new information to the students and when the educator sees that a lecture is required. Here is a link to an interested webpage about flipped classroom.


The nursing classroom in the age of technology includes an educator who is using technology properly to enhance the students’ learning experience and prepare students to be ready to challenge themselves and use technology in order to maximize their benefit of attending that class. Each technology method must be used in a reasonable way to let the students focus on their main goal and objectives. The nursing educators who are able to teach in a technology friendly environment are inspiring their students to be competent in using technology in their professional role as nurses. There are many resources that the educator and the nursing students can use to get the benefit of technology. One of these resources is this webpage which is about the Gorge Washington University School of Nursing’s Teaching and Transforming through Technology (T3) Program. This program is designed to improve the quality of nursing education through the integration of technology-based and online teaching strategies.   


I envision a technological enhanced nursing classroom to be an educational setting where the educator is utilizing technology to engage students. This picture illustrates how do I envision nursing classroom in the age of technology.