Week 3 Reflections
This week in MHST 624 I was challenged to flex my mental muscles a little. As the discussion and reading addressed context relevance in academic curriculums, and so many great posts from classmates discussing their academic instructional experience. My background as a teacher is completely clinical and when it comes topics and discussions like this I always have to remind myself to "loosen up" my thinking a bit and explore the concepts application in academia and not just the clinical setting.
There was really great class discussion about the importance of curriculum content in nursing education staying relevant with the time. I got to examine the concept of context from the learners perspective in this course and how teaching methodologies such as our learning portfolios help keep the course context relevant.
Inevitably the discussion of the pandemic came into play also. How could we possibly discuss context relevant curriculum if we did not discuss teaching during the time of COVID 19. It was great to learn from classmates who have seen the curriculum they work with flex and change to adapt online learning models and interactive web based activities to keep engaged with their students throughout the pandemic. In reflecting on this learning, I realize how important these changes are to my role as a clinical educator. If students learning in their academic courses is not context relevant it could potentially create greater challenges for these students as they enter into practice and need to bridge the gap between what they have learned in school and professional practice. As students are now back in the clinical setting to complete placement, they are learning incredibly important, context relevant concepts such as proper use of PPE, screening methods for COVID19 and learning to balance their clinical days with the added nursing considerations of working during a pandemic. These are all valuable, context relevant skills that will be of incredible value when they transition into practice. Showing that academic curriculum that stays context relevant is not only important for the development of high quality education, but benefits bridging the theory to practice gap for novice nurses.
I stumbled down the pandemic literature rabbit hole a bit this week as I wanted to know more about what peers are saying in academia about the effect this pandemic will have on nursing education. Limiting my findings, I included one of the most interesting articles I found here about how the future of nursing education could be changed by this experience.
Morin, K. H. (2020). Nursing education after COVID‐19: Same or different? The Journal of Clinical Nursing. 29(17). https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.15322
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