Competency 1: Facilitate Learning: Nurse Educators are responsible for creating an environment in classroom, laboratory, and clinical settings that facilitates student learning and the achievement of desired cognitive, affective, and psychomotor outcomes. Some tasks included with this competency:

• Uses information technologies skillfully to support the teaching-learning process
• Models critical and reflective thinking
• Engages in self-reflection and continued learning to improve teaching practices that facilitate learning
• Implements a variety of teaching strategies appropriate to learner needs, desired learner outcomes, content, and context

Well, I’m not sure I can consider myself a “skillful” user of education technology, but I certainly have improved my skill set and been exposed to a whole new world of technology this quarter. To begin with, I had not even heard of web 2.0, and had a lot to learn. So many of the web 2.0 technologies we discussed this quarter can be beneficial to nursing education and create an environment that facilitates learning. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, nursing education tends to be mired in the traditional teacher driven, content centered 1.0 pedagogy. Effecting change in nursing education to encourage the utilization of web 2.0 technologies is requiring a paradigm shift. There are important things to keep in mind along the way. For example, a concept I will attempt to model in my practice is that we must use technology in pedagogically sound ways and not just use technology for technologies sake. Web 2.0 technologies have the capabilities to augment traditional educational practices and make them even better.

An example of this is the blog. The literature indicates that there is value in reflective journaling for undergraduate nursing students; however, there is evidence that educators struggle to incorporate reflective processes into education (Epp, 2008). Introducing the blog as a reflective journaling tool can be an excellent educational practice because the medium promotes self-directed versus teacher-directed learning, encourages self-reflection as a model of social experience and self-identity, and enriches the process of learning (Maag, 2005). I have personally utilized a blog this quarter to engage in self reflection and continued learning to improve teaching practices that will facilitate learning.

Web 2.0 technologies offer an opportunity for nurse educators to implement a variety of learner appropriate teaching strategies. Used appropriately, web 2.0 tools can be used to create personal learning environments and learning networks within a learner-centric paradigm (Cobb, 2008). Web 2.0 technologies lend themselves well to the 21^st Century Education Skills required for success in an “increasingly diverse, globalized, and complex media-saturated society” (21^st Century Schools, nd). See week four’s blog for lots of information on 21^st Century skills and let it suffice here to note that these skills include critical thinking. Week five of the course was devoted to critical thinking and the blog for week 5 offers some good resources to enhance the critical thinking skills that are so important to facilitate effective communication in nursing education. Critical thinking affects all forms of communication: speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and web 2.0 technologies can enhance communication through blogs, podcasts, videos, wikis, and social networking. However, students need a “balanced media diet” in order to develop a variety of skills. Research indicates that learners have changed as a result of exposure to technology; reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not (Wolpert, 2009). Yes, it’s all about balance.

Achieving Balance

Competency 2: Facilitate Learner Development & Socialization to the Nursing Role. The nurse educator:

• Provides resources to diverse learners that help meet their individual learning needs
• Creates learning environments that are focused on socialization to the role of the nurse and facilitate learners’ self-reflection and personal goal setting.

The web 2.0 technologies discussed this quarter can be used to address the needs of diverse learners. Audio learners can be engaged through podcasting, visual learners through video-on-demand and other visual media, and kinesthetic through virtual worlds such as Second Life. Diploma Guide.com offers 30 of the best web based educational tools for auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learners.

Nursing is a practice discipline and profession, and as such, students must be socialized to the role. Social networking offers students the opportunity to build personal learning environments using an aggregation of social media applications. Virtual world technology, such as Second Life, allows students to practice working in the nursing environment, getting comfortable with their new identity. Nursing is a collaborative profession and technologies such as social networking sites and wikis offer students opportunities to collaborate with each other and with other nurses. This nursing wiki is a great example of collaborative learning that targets diverse learners and incorporates cultural components. The original wiki is in German and can be translated into several languages.

Competency 5: Function as a Change Agent and Leader. The nurse educator:

• Promotes innovative practices in educational environments

Innovation was so important to this course, that it was the focus of two different weeks; four and nine. Having the opportunity to take this class and be exposed to the current issues and advances in educational technology infers a responsibility to advocate for innovative practices in my future practice. Dr. Barrett’s focus on eportfolios inspired me to build a website devoted to resources for nursing portfolios as a project for this course. Portfolios are widely used throughout undergraduate and graduate nursing programs to document work and evaluate progress. My graduate program at SPU requires a portfolio that must be updated and kept current each quarter. Using this bPortfolio blog and building the nursing portfolios website convinced me that eportfolios are far superior to hard-copy versions. Eportfolios are easy to manage and update, environmentally friendly, and simple to share. I intend to expand my nursing portfolio website to be useful to all levels of nurses and nursing students for my capstone project. My mission is to convince the SPU nursing faculty to switch to an online portfolio format for all nursing students. This project will allow me to function as a change agent while sharing the technology knowledge I learned this quarter.

References

Cobb, Jeff. (2008). Learning 2.0 for associations. Retrieved October 1, 2009 from http://www.tagoras.com/docs/Learning_20_for_Associations_v1.pdf

Epp, S. (2008). The value of reflective journaling in undergraduate nursing education: A literature review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45(9), 1379-1388. Retrieved October 10, 2009, from http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0020748908000266

Maag, M. (2005). The potential use of blogs in nursing education . Medscape Nurses. Retrieved October 10, 2009, from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/498947

National League for Nursing. (2005). Core competencies of nurse educators with task statements. Retrieved October 4, 2009, from http://www.nln.org/facultydevelopment/pdf/corecompetencies.pdf

21^st Century Schools (nd). What is 21^st Century Education? Possibilities for 21^st century education. Retrieved October 25, 2009, from http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/What_is_21st_Century_Education.htm

Wolpert, S. (2009). Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/is-technology-producing-a-decline-79127.aspx

My personal Technology Creed focused on ISTE Standard 4: Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility. Teachers understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behavior in their professional practices. Teachers:

1. Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.
2. Address the diverse needs of all learners by using learner-centered strategies and providing equitable access to appropriate digital tools and resources.
3. Promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information.
4. Develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digitalage communication and collaboration tools.

The script for the Technology Creed was written in Google-docs, an open source, web-based, collaborative word processing tool. The Technology Creed was created as a digital narrative using screenr and published to this WordPress blog  using Vodpod . All images used in the Technology Creed were from Creative Commons or Flickr and labeled for reuse.

The Innovative Educator blogged about the value of using cell phones to enhance education; encouraging teachers once again to embrace technology rather than ban it. The author makes a great point, “We need to begin engaging in “know where” (to find it) rather than “know what” (the answer is) teaching.” Meaning it is more important to teach students how to access any information rather than memorize it. Ideally they’ll do something with the information that is more meaningful and authentic than placing answers in a test booklet. This philosophy lends itself well to nursing education, especially in the realm of pharmacology. I have never understood why nursing students are expected to memorize drug information, when as nurses they will be expected to look up this vital information. Do we really want to train students to “trust their memories” with something as life and death as drug information? I believe it is vitally important for students to learn how to quickly find the latest, most trusted evidence upon which to base practice decisions. A smart cell phone could help students immensely.

Another “emerging technology” that has found a niche in nursing education is Second Life (SL). The National League for Nursing looked at three pioneering projects using SL around the country and its impact on nursing education (Skiba, 2009). For example, Tacoma Community College (right here in Washington State) has an immersive virtual world that uses avatar robots as simulated patients and an interface that interacts with hospital equipment, medicine, vitals, patient charts, and much more while recording student or team decision-making. It has a presentation version for group viewing and a teaching version for synchronous instruction. Check out John Miller’s Youtube video examples from Tacoma CC.

Higher education is using SL to recruit and retain students, to teach classes, and as supplementary learning experiences. SL is all about experiential learning, being immersed in a virtual environment. It adds another dimension to simulations and allows for role playing, collaboration, real-time interactions between students and faculty, and experimentation. SL can provide alternative environments to create real-life scenarios for nursing students, which is extremely valuable because actual time at clinical sites is severely limited.

The Youtube video above is a great example of a media sharing site. Other video sharing sites courtesy of Dr. Barrett at Teachers for the 21^st Century include:

• http://www.youtube.com (10 minute maximum video length — a very public space… OK for your students, but you might not like to post there)
• http://teachertube.com or http://schooltube.com (two video hosting sites especially for schools)
• http://video.google.com (a little less public, well integrated with other Google tools, only available through GoogleApps for Education)
• http://blip.tv/
• http://ourmedia.org (a community of individuals dedicated to spreading grassroots creativity: videos, podcasts and other works of personal media)
• http://www.motionbox.com (750MB free storage, unlimited video uploads for $29.95 per year)
• http://www.fliggo.com/ (25 minutes maximum video limit under Basic account, upgrades available for fee)

Some good sites for free use photo sharing include flickr, Creative Commons,  Wikimedia, and Google-images. Google-images has an advanced feature that will allow you to search for images “labeled for reuse” so you won’t run into any copyright issues.

Reference

Skiba, D. J. (2009). Emerging technologies center nursing education 2.0: A second look at second life. Nursing Education Perspectives, 30(2), 129-131. Retrieved from http://nln.allenpress.com/nlnonline/?request=get-document&issn=1536-5026&volume=030&issue=02&page=0129

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself”

The Passage of Time

Those of us who are not digital natives(me!) have had to embrace countless technological changes and it only makes sense that there will be many more to come. Even the natives are forced to adapt to frequent change; from the somewhat mundane in the form of new operating systems and software upgrades, to a myriad of exciting new web 2.0 tools.

The Future of the Internet III (2008) discusses the key findings from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020. This survey of internet leaders, activists, and analysts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a primary device for online access, voice-recognition improves, artificial and virtual reality become more embedded in everyday life, and the architecture of the internet itself improves. They disagree about whether these advances will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations, or better home lives (pretty heady expectations for technology, if you ask me). Here are the key findings:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• The transparency of people and organizations will increase, but that will not necessarily yield more personal integrity, social tolerance, or forgiveness.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• Those working to enforce intellectual property law and copyright protection will remain in a continuing arms race, with the crackers who will find ways to copy and share content without payment.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.
• Next-generation engineering of the network to improve the current internet architecture is more likely than an effort to rebuild the architecture from scratch.

As a vehicle to facilitate our Ethernet discussion, we watched a 12 minute video on 6^th Sense Technology that gives an amazing glimpse of the wonders we can expect in the near future. Pranav Mistry, the brilliant inventor, based his work on the idea of taking the digital world out into the physical world.  I immediately thought of the benefits this technology could offer in the realm of healthcare and nursing education. We are always reminding students to “look at the patient, not just the monitor” and with 6^th sense technology, the patient could become the monitor. Wow! Pranav says he will open-source the technology behind 6^th sense, making its possibilities available for everyone.

web 2.0 world

Reference

Anderson, J. Q., & Raine, L. (2008). The future of the internet III. Pew Internet and American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2008/PIP_FutureInternet3.pdf.pdf

• Back to School with the class of web 2.0 This 3 part article gives a great comprehensive overview of web 2.0 for education. Part 1 covers web 2.0 tools such as organizers, grade-books, math (take note all you math teachers), learning & research, to-dos, note-taking, resume building, and media sharing. Part 2 discusses web-based alternatives to desktop office applications including: word processing, presentations, diagrams, spreadsheets, and more. The author then goes on to compare all of the web-based word processors for use in education. He determines that none of the available applications are quite ready yet–they are lacking specific formatting options, etc.; however, they do allow collaborative editing, document sharing, and online storage giving them potential benefits. Part 3 gives real cases of web 2.0 used in classrooms around the world and covers blogging, podcasting, media sharing, and wikis. Links to all the tools and applications discussed are provided as well as helpful descriptions & comparisons.
• The Ultimate Student Resource List with tons of tools and applications all geared toward education and making students more productive and relaxed. The site is organized in a way that’s easy to follow and everything on the list is free. Yes, free.
• The Top 25 Web 2.0 Applications to Improve a Student’s or Professor’s Productivity The idea is that these applications will in some way increase productivity and/or reduce time taken for specific tasks. Thus, some companies are more heavily represented because their products are designed for productivity (i.e. Google).
• Directory of Learning Tools from the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies  has over 3100 tools listed in 25 categories. The page on podcasting tools include those for subscribing to and listening to podcasts as well as creating and delivering podcasts.

Podcasts? Well, this week, we were also supposed to explore podcasting. Boulos, Maramba, & Wheeler (2006) describe many educational applications of podcasting and videocasting, including:

• Recordings of lectures for those students unable to attend the lecture in person
• Audio recordings of textbook content by chapter allowing students to “read” or review texts while walking or driving to class (can be significant aid for auditory learners)
• Downloadable libraries of high resolution heart and respiratory sounds for healthcare students.

Accessing lectures and textbooks while driving, riding, or walking would certainly allow an increase in productivity.

Examples of podcasts useful for nursing students:

• McGraw-Hill
• New England Journal of Medicine
• Johns Hopkins
• Cardiovascular Multimedia Information Network

This last one (CVMD) allows students to listen to heart sounds and examine ECG strips over and over again if they want to without bothering any patients. Now that is productive and supportive!

Reference:

Kamel Boulos, M. N., Maramba, I., & Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs, and podcasts: A new generation of web based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education. BioMed Central Medical Education, 6(41), Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/41.

I know that I am somewhat unclear about copyright as it applies to the internet. I mean, is providing a link and giving credit to the author/site enough? With all the people making their own youtube videos and using music on their social networking sites, there is a lot of confusion over copyright and re-mixing. I would like to (legally) use some music for a video I am creating for this class. Michael RobbGreico created a music video for the Temple University Media Education Lab

explaining copyright and then posted it on youtube to help alleviate some of the confusion. You can download lesson plans along with the video to use with students to facilitate a discussion about copyright. The video sings that the most important function of copyright is, “Balancing rights of users and owners of intellectual property.” Of course, now I’ve got the song stuck in my head!

Another fabulous resource for copyright is the Berkman Center for Internet and Society Part of Harvard Law School, the Berkman Center was founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. The Berkman Center is involved in an unbelievable number of projects dealing with copyright issues: creative commons, copyright for librarians, citizen media law project, and noank media to name a few. They are also a partner in the Internet Safety Technical Task Force.

The Internet Safety Technical  Task Force examined the extent of the threats children face on social networking sites and reported to 47 State Attorneys General. The report concluded that the problem of bullying among children, both online and offline, poses a far more serious challenge than the sexual solicitation of minors by adults that has received so much media attention.“Social networks are very much like real-world communities that are comprised mostly of good people who are there for the right reasons.”

An article at Safe-teens.com Back to School Advice for Safe and Ethical Social Networking states that the most commonly recognized definition of bullying includes repeated, unwanted aggressive behavior over a period of time with an imbalance of power between the bully and the victim. In theory, that also covers cyberbullying, but some have taken a broader approach to cyberbullying to also include single or occasional episodes of a person insulting another person online. Indeed, because of the possibility of it being forwarded, a single episode of online harassment can have long-term consequences. Manifestations of cyberbullying include name calling, sending embarrassing pictures, sharing personal information or secrets without permission, and spreading rumors. It can also include trickery, exclusion, and impersonation. So, do these threats mean that we should try to discourage the use of social networking sites for students?

Tynes (2007) suggests that the benefits of social networking sites for students far outweigh the dangers. Tynes believes we do students a disservice when banning them from social networking sites (as if we really could!). Social networking offers students invaluable opportunities for cognitive and psychosocial development. Tynes offers practical alternatives to banning students from social networks: 1) Maintain open and honest dialogue. Parents and teachers need to talk frankly with teens about the risks and benefits associated with the internet. Research indicates that girls who discuss internet safety with a teacher are less likely to agree to meet in person with a stranger encountered online. 2) Help youths protect their privacy online. Encourage the use of privacy settings on social networking sites. 3) Develop an exit strategy. Help kids recognize unsafe behaviors, warn/block suspicious persons, and report threatening behavior to authorities. We need to provide students with the tools that will keep them safe on the internet—not attempt to keep them away from the internet.

Media literacy and critical thinking “is protective against manipulation and harm” (Collier, 2009). See last week’s (week 5) blog entry for lots of information about critical thinking. Encouraging kids to practice good digital citizenship helps protect all young people, because “behaving aggressively online more than doubles the risk of being victimized.” Collier gives the formula:

Digital citizenship + media literacy = online safety 2.0

More information on what media literacy looks like can be found at Project New Media Literacies (NML), a research initiative based at MIT’s. NML explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world.

Collier, A. (2009). Social media literacy: The new internet safety. Net Family News.org. Retrieved from http://www.netfamilynews.org/2009/02/social-media-literacy-new-internet.html

McGuire, D. (2008). Understanding copyright: Knowing your rights and knowing when you’re right. Education for a Digital World. Retrieved from http://www.colfinder.org/materials/Education_for_a_Digital_World/Education_for_a_Digital_World_part3.pdf

Tynes, B. M. (2007). Internet safety gone wild? Sacrificing the educational and psychosocial benefits of online social environments. Journal of Adolescent Research, 22(6), 575-584. Retrieved, November 3, 2009, from http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/guestlectures/tas/tynes%282007%29.pdf

• identify and define authentic problems and significant questions for investigation
• plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project
• collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions
• use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore alternative solutions

All of these bullet points are very pertinent to nursing education and as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, critical thinking is a big buzz word for our discipline. The nursing process covers all the aspects mentioned above: assessment, diagnosis, outcome identification, planning, intervention, and evaluation. Nurses must identify and define the problems their clients’ present with by collecting and analyzing data with which to make informed decisions or diagnoses. Nurses investigate, plan, and manage activities around client needs and use multiple processes and diverse perspectives to explore solutions for clients. In short, nurses use critical thinking all the time!

This week we were also told to become familiar with online mapping software for brainstorming. It’s no surprise that cognitive mapping has been linked to improved critical thinking. Samawi (2006) reports on the effect of concept mapping on critical thinking skills in a quasi-experimental study of baccalaureate nursing students. The results suggest that concept mapping triggers critical thinking which guides the student to engage in meaningful learning. The mind maps the students created showed more complexity over time, allowing the researchers a means to evaluate the students’ evolving critical thinking skills. There are many free online mind-mapping tools available: Webspiration,  Bubbl.us, and Mindmeister are a few. I signed up for Mindmeister and found it to be fairly intuitive (after a short video tutorial) although somewhat cumbersome to use.  Feedback from classmates indicated that Bubbl.us had limitations as well. The Mindmeister tool allows for real-time collaboration showing each users work in a different color so you can track what’s happening. The maps are importable and exportable to other formats, allowing integration to a blog or other sites you may have.

It’s important to remember that critical thinking affects all forms of communication: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Technology can enhance communication, but can too much technology be detrimental to critical thinking? A study at UCLA by Greenleaf (Wolpert, 2009)  indicates that “as technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved.” Learners have changed as a result of exposure to technology; reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not, Greenfield said. Greenfield recommends a “balanced media diet” in order to develop a variety of skills. No one medium is good for everything. I agree. As a non-traditional baccalaureate student a few years ago, I was introduced to mind-mapping much later in life than most. I find it a difficult task at best. Add in the challenges of new online technology and I find it overwhelming. If I must create a mind-map, I am probably going to utilize post-it notes and colored pencils. Let me apologize ahead of time to my instructors…

References

Wolpert, S. (2009). Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? UCLA Newsroom. Retrieved from http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/is-technology-producing-a-decline-79127.aspx

Samawi, Z. (2006). The effect of concept mapping on critical thinking skills and dispositions of junior and senior baccalaureate nursing students. The Second International Conference on Concept Mapping. Retrieved from http://cmc.ihmc.us/cmc2006Papers/cmc2006-p159.pdf

So what is 21st century education? “It is bold.  It breaks the mold.  It is flexible, creative, challenging, and complex.  It addresses a rapidly changing world filled with fantastic new problems as well as exciting new possibilities” (21^st Century Schools, nd). I loved how that sounded, but it didn’t tell me a whole lot. The definitive site for 21^st century skills is The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21, 2009). P21 states they are the leading advocacy organization focused on infusing 21^st century skills into education. P21 offers a document on 21^st century outcomes for education that illiterates 21^st century skills. So what are 21^st century skills? The skills that will help us to thrive in an “increasingly diverse, globalized, and complex media-saturated society” (21^st Century Schools, nd). These skills include:

• creativity and innovation
• critical thinking and problem solving
• communication and collaboration
• information media and ICT literacy
• flexibility and adaptability
• social and cross cultural skills

So, right away, there were some of the buzz words for the week: innovation and creative thinking. Well some of the bookmarks the class shared this week appeared to me to be truly innovative. Take Diigo, for example. A bookmarking tool like delicious but with the ability to highlight text (!) in the documents/sites you find, as well as the ability to attach sticky notes (!) and clip pictures. Take the tour! (Diigo) I found an innovative slideshare about creative thinking (visual and creative thinking) that defines creativity as the ability to use imagination to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like to create meaningful new ideas, forms, and methods. And, Teacher Tap is a professional development resource for educators that has a cool page on critical and creative thinking, including Bloom’s taxonomy. Neilsen (2009) offers Ten Ideas for Getting Started with 21^st Century Teaching and Learning. Neilsen suggests that utilizing technology standards is a vital component of infusing technology into the curriculum (ISTE Education Technology Standards http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS). Neilsen also recommends you join a social networking site (“You are NOT too old for facebook,” she says) such as Classroom 2.0., a social networking site for those interested in web 2.0 technologies in education.

I don’t want to intimate that 21^st Century Skills are only attainable through technology. Certainly, technology is not an indispensable component of communication, problem solving, or creative thinking. However, being proficient (and innovative!) with technology is crucial to succeed in 21^st Century environments. And let’s not forget that all this technology is supposed to lead to knowledge construction (the other buzz word of the week). Knowledge is not memorization of facts and figures, but is constructed through research and application, and connected to previous knowledge and personal experience.

So, how can we apply technology to knowledge construction? Well, collaboration is considered an excellent method for knowledge construction. Online discussion can provide the collaboration needed to accomplish knowledge construction. In Promoting Durable Knowledge Construction through Online Discussion, Knowlton (n.d.) gives practical advice, grounded in a framework of durable knowledge construction, to ensure that online discussions contribute to higher order thinking skills. I think we have all seen how online discussions can quickly digress to meaningless chit-chat, bland comments, and obvious glad-handing. Knowlton points out that quality online discussions leading to durable (lasting) knowledge don’t just happen. Educators must carefully design and facilitate online discussions. Knowlton proposes that effective online discussion questions fall into 3 categories: (1) Domains of Thinking Questions require students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the types of problem solving approaches and knowledge construction mechanisms inherent to a specific field (i.e. scientific method). (2) Case Analysis Questions require students to apply course theories and concepts to specific, real world scenarios (used a lot in nursing) and (3) Introspective Questions based on issues of critical thinking and designed to encourage students to examine “how they learn.” Knowlton uses Bloom’s taxonomy to demonstrate the levels of learning to strive for in planning questions for online discussions. As a nurse educator, I can use Knowlton’s suggestions to craft case study discussion questions that will require critical and creative thinking and allow students to construct lasting knowledge.

References

Knowlton, D. (nd). Promoting durable knowledge construction through online discussion. Crichton College, Center for Distance Education and Learning Technologies. Retrieved October 23, 2009, from http://frank.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed01/11.html

Neilsen, L. (2009). Ten ideas for getting started with 21^st century teaching and learning. Tech & Learning. Retrieved October 20, 2009, from http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/22558

OPSI. (2008). K-12 Educational Technology Learning Standards. Retrieved from http://www.k12.wa.us/edtech/pubdocs/K12EdTechStandards9-12_12-08.pdf

21^st Century Schools (nd). What is 21^st Century Education? Possibilities for 21^st century education. Retrieved October 25, 2009, from http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/What_is_21st_Century_Education.htm

Beaufait, Lavin, & Tomei (2008) offer many defining tenets of collaboration such as: process oriented, learning groups, mutual responsibility, syntheses, and interdependence.  Collaboration implies a high level of interdependence between learners; this interdependence is defined as “a dynamic of being mutually responsible to and dependent on others” (pg. 443). Wikipedia (the wikiest of wikis!) defines collaborative learning as “methodologies and environments in which learners engage in a common task in which each individual depends on and is accountable to each other.” Beaufait et al. believe that collaboration requires equality in participation, with genuine interactions between participants, and the synthesis of work into a unified whole. Used appropriately, a wiki can provide the framework for unification the authors describe. Wikis are collaborative environments by design; their structure is shaped from within rather than imposed from above (Engstrom & Jewett, 2005).

Benefits of collaborative learning include increasing the intellectual capacity of learners, critical thinking, and social and job skills (Beaufait et al., 2008). Critical thinking is a huge buzzword in nursing education and nursing is by nature a collaborative profession. Nurses are an integral part of a healthcare team and as such must be collaborative. I think a wiki for nurses and/or nurse educators would be a valuable tool. And guess what?! I discovered a nursing wiki that is touted as a free multilingual wiki project for healthcare and nursing information that anyone can edit. The wiki is driven by the nursing community and concentrates on nursing-specific content. This wiki is still fairly new, but a sponsoring “sister” wiki in Germany (PflegeWiki) has more than 5000 articles about different nursing topics. For example there are entries with concrete instructions (how to put on sterile gloves), special procedures (replacing a tracheal cannula), profiles of well-known nurses, information about diseases and anatomy, as well as nursing theories, nursing models, and articles about nursing science. Many articles contain photographs or other visual aids, which can also be freely used on home pages as well as for lectures as long as credit is given to PflegeWiki.

The collaboration of many nurses and nurse educators enrich the wiki with their specific expertise and experience, which are often missing from common nursing textbooks. Nursing students can publish their class notes and papers on the wiki and find the necessary information to prepare for exams or clinicals. Patients and their families can find information and share experiences. The wiki can allow users to develop new knowledge that is “shared and constructed rather than transmitted one way from teacher to students” (Beaufait et al., 2008). Collaborative teaching allows students and teachers to work together to “discover, create, and expand their understanding and skills. This is collaborative learning the wiki-way.

References

Beaufait, P. A., Lavin, R. S., & Tomei, J. (2008). Online collaboration: An overview. Education for a Digital World. Retrieved October 14, 2009, from http://www.colfinder.org/materials/Education_for_a_Digital_World/Education_for_a_Digital_World_part5.pdf

Engstrom, M. E., & Jewett, D. (2005). Collaborative learning the wiki way. Tech Trends, 49(6), 12-16. Retrieved October 16, 2009, from http://www.columbia.edu/~yc2154/013007/out-4.pdf

Tomei & Lavin (2008) offer my favorite definition of  blogs as “personal websites operated by individuals who compile chronological lists of links to stuff that interests them, interspersed with information, editorializing, and personal asides” (p. 383). After gleaning a basic understanding and definition of blogs, I set out to determine what role blogs might play in nursing education. From learning to communicate within patient charts accurately and succinctly, to disseminating information on evidence-based practice with the goal of providing safer patient care, written communication is certainly a necessary component of health care. In The Potential Use of Blogs in Nursing Education, Maag (2005) writes, “The art of blogging can unleash the hidden capabilities of aspiring writers and motivate expression of thoughts, ideas, and interests in real time.” Maag points out that personal publishing via blogs can be an excellent educational practice because the medium promotes self-directed versus teacher-directed learning, encourages self-reflection as a model of social experience and self-identity, and enriches the process of learning.” This article really resonated with me because of the struggle I see within nursing education to embrace a more learner-centered model. Could blogging help nursing education move away from a teacher-directed, lecture driven format where we feed students information and evaluate learning through test after test after test?

The Maag article also resonated because it mentioned blogging to encourage self-reflection. There was the reflection word, aka the tag of the week. All of my courses at SPU have involved reflection and in my education courses we have discussed reflective journals as effective tools to enhance learning in the clinical environment. As students think and write about their clinical practice, they construct some of their own learning. I have been researching and learning about the benefit of journaling and summative student self-reflection as a means for retaining and learning material. Thinking inwardly, recognizing and acknowledging personal abilities and limits, asking questions and looking for bias or incomplete information in the answers are reflective stages that lay the foundation for the kind of learning necessary to nursing education and practice (DeYoung, 2009).

A review of the literature on the value of reflective journaling in undergraduate nursing education provides rationale and support for engaging undergraduate students in the reflective process; however there is evidence that educators struggle to incorporate reflective processes into education (Epp, 2008). The review concludes that nurse educators need to utilize various tools and strategies for facilitating the growth of undergraduate students into reflective practitioners. A reflective blog would certainly constitute such a tool.

References

D’Souza, Q. (nd). RSS ideas for educators: Version 1.1. Retrieved October 6, 2009, from http://www.teachinghacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/RSS%20Ideas%20for%20Educators111.pdf

DeYoung, S. (2009). Teaching strategies for nurse educators (2^nd ed. ). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education.

Epp, S. (2008). The value of reflective journaling in undergraduate nursing education: A literature review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 45(9), 1379-1388. Retrieved October 10, 2009, from http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0020748908000266

Maag, M. (2005). The potential use of blogs in nursing education . Medscape Nurses. Retrieved October 10, 2009, from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/498947

Tomei, J., & Lavin, R. (2008). Blogs, identity, and engagement. Education for a Digital World. Retrieved October 8, 2009, from http://www.col.org/resources/crsMaterials/Pages/edDigitalWorld.aspx