Considering Academia

Week 5 Discussion Reflection

This week we continued our class discussion surrounding the issues, challenges and responsibilities of teachers in the health discipline. I continued to challenge myself to think outside of my clinical educator experience and focus my discussion around curriculum development in nursing education and some of the challenges and issues that it presents. While I am spending a lot of time applying course content my current position in the clinical setting, I really want to take the opportunity in the discussion forums to explore academic teaching considerations. The reason for this is two fold. The first is that I tend to direct my learning towards clinical education, because that is certainly my passion and my experience. The second is that the more I learn about curriculum development, the more I realize how heavily it influences my experience with new graduate nurses and the tools that they come to the clinical setting with.

This week I looked at the concept of the flipped classroom, and how flipped classroom instruction can help to keep the curriculum context relevant without having to complete multiple levels of review and approval. The concept of the flipped classroom allows teachers to identify learning objectives for courses, that can be used from year to year, but introduce context relevance at the same time by the way in which they teach the content. Students are presented with learning that addresses core concepts before the classroom setting, then immersed in learning using tools such as simulation or case studies. Much like in the clinical setting, educators in the academic setting need to be provided with tools and the necessary flexibility to implement change when they recognize that change is needed.

In my attempts to dive further into academic applications of our discussions, I reviewed an interesting article by Roshangar et al (2020) that explored how mind mapping could be used in partnership with case-based learning in order to enhance critical thinking in nursing students. As a clinical educator, facilitating the development of critical thinking skills is always a focus of our learning. The applications of mind mapping to guide students from entry level to graduate level learning is an interesting concept that could be extended to help visualize that learning in the clinical setting after graduation.

Focusing on academic teaching is actually providing me a lot of incite into applications of clinical teaching, and one of the reasons that I am enjoying the freedom of identifying our learning objectives so far in this course!

Reference

Roshangar, F., Azar, E. F., Sarbakhsh, P., & Azarmi, R. (2020). The Effect of Case-Based Learning with or without Conceptual Mapping Method on Critical Thinking and Academic Self-Efficacy of Nursing Students. Journal of Biochemical Technology, 11(1), 37–44.