Innovations in nursing instruction featured in Teaching Academy video series

Strategies for active learning in undergraduate nursing courses are among the topics discussed by two recent Teaching Academy inductees in an ongoing video series.

Pamela Karagory

Pamela Karagory and Vicki Simpson, clinical assistant professors in the School of Nursing in the College of Health and Human Sciences, are among 11 faculty members and graduate teaching assistants recently honored by the Purdue Teaching Academy. Karagory and Simpson share their innovative ideas on engaging students and facilitating learning in a series of videos posted on the Teaching Academy website.

In each short video interview, an honoree discusses the teaching philosophies, strategies and tools used to engage students in ways that facilitate learning.

In her video, Karagory presents strategies in working with millennials, who are technologically savvy and have a strong sense of inquiry. She uses flipped classroom strategies such as providing readings and videos as prework, and then using group work in the classroom to address case studies. At the end of the class, she asks students to write one-minute papers describing the critical learning that occurred for them.

“It is always amazing to me how these students … take deep dives into the information and come up with really innovative, appropriate problem-solving answers,” Karagory says.

Another strategy described in her video is a digital badge program that is among the first in the country for undergraduate nursing education at the university level. Students build their own digital badge portfolios that demonstrate developments in nursing skills, professionalism and socialization into the nursing field.

“We’re empowering these students to really be able to not only recognize their learning, but be able to go out and display it,” Karagory says.

Karagory's video is available here.

Vicki Simpson

Simpson says active learning strategies are essential in nursing classrooms. As professional nurses, her students will have to draw on their knowledge quickly and apply it effectively in working with patients in complex situations.

Although she has used active learning throughout her teaching career, Simpson added new strategies and technologies after redesigning the large Introduction to Nursing course, usually taken by freshmen, during her participation in the spring 2012 cohort of IMPACT (Instructional Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation). The following semester, she added volunteer peer mentors to support students' learning in groups and to develop connections with the School of Nursing and the profession.

“This course really is about the basic tenets of nursing. It’s about professionalism and communication, and quality and safety, and all of those things that are very vital as these students go through their educational process,” Simpson says. “The peer mentors are able to serve as role models for these students, and they’re able to gain some leadership and communications skills along the way as well,”

Simpson's video is available here.

The entire series of video interviews is available on the Teaching Academy website.