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

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 

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.  

Tips on using 'feed-forward' when setting assignments

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.

How can I use authentic assessment in my classroom?

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.