Elsevier

Nurse Education Today

Volume 52, May 2017, Pages 40-42
Nurse Education Today

Contemporary Issues
The design process of a multimodal module that synthesized knowledge across nursing courses

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.02.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • BSN students prefer animated multimedia as a teaching/learning strategy.

  • Animated pathophysiology facilitates understanding of course content better than lecture alone.

  • Animated multimedia as a teaching strategy promotes engaged learning.

Abstract

Background

Nursing faculty are being challenged to increase the use of technology in the classroom. Use of technology addresses multiple learning styles, increases student engagement, encourages active learning and improves students' attention.

Objectives

Evaluate student satisfaction to a faculty designed multimedia teaching strategy.

Design

Cross sectional design with data collected over six semesters from six cohorts of nursing students.

Setting

An urban university in the Midwest United States.

Participants

154 sophomore generic and accelerated BSN students enrolled in Fundamentals of Nursing; Ninety-nine participants were female (66.9%) and 49 (31.8%) were male. Eighty-three percent were less than 20 years to 30 years in age.

Methods

A multimedia teaching strategy developed by three faculty integrating narrated case study, questioning and animation of skills and pathophysiology was implemented during the class session on infection control. At the conclusion, questionnaires were distributed to collect evaluation data.

Results

120 students (77.9%) stated that the animated pathophysiology helped them understand the pathophysiological processes better than lecture alone. When combined with lecture, 121 students or 78.6% reported a better understanding of the material than if presented as lecture alone. 123 (79.9%) of the students stated that watching the animated video improved their understanding of the lecture content. As stated by one student, "I liked the visualization because it helped me further understand the material." 104 (67.5%) stated that presenting course content from multiple courses into one format facilitated the importance of these courses; “I liked that different aspect[s] of nursing were brought together.”

Conclusions

Use of multimedia in the classroom engages students in the learning process by actively involving students in the learning process as well as facilitating the delivery of difficult course content. Overall, students voiced a preference for all instructional materials to be presented in an animated format.

Introduction

Using an innovative pedagogical approach to enhance synthesis and understanding of multiple courses' contents, a group of nursing faculty designed and developed a multimedia teaching strategy integrating course content from Fundamentals of Nursing, Pathophysiology and Health Assessment. Faculty noted that our students often learn course content and compartmentalize it not realizing they need to integrate and synthesize this content to provide knowledgeable and safe patient care. Further complicating this issue is that classes often contain students of differing ages and learning styles (Billings and Halstead, 2012). To address this issue a group of faculty designed a multimodal module which incorporated case studies, questioning, animation of pathophysiology, and demonstrated assessment and care of a tuberculosis patient beginning in the outpatient setting. This pedagogical approach not only addressed learning preferences of multiple generations but transformed learning from passive to active through the use of multiple teaching strategies and integration of technology. It demonstrated the importance of each course taken by students and how the content of each course is embedded within the others. Using a technological approach engages students of all generations through the use of powerful images and realistic scenarios, actively involving them in the learning process as well as engaging them “in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation” (Bonwell and Eison, 1991, Luzon and Leton, 2016).

Students often state they favor the traditional lecture type of learning, as it is familiar. Sand-Jecklin (2007) found that nursing students still prefer “passive in-class learning strategies… with highlighting notes, taking notes, and memorization of information” (p. 477) ranked highest. According to Billings and Halstead (2012), passive learning (taking notes, reading assignments) decreases students' anxiety and provides a sense of security that they are being given the information needed to be successful. This project bridged the divide between students' security with lecture by blending traditional lecture and technological experiences, providing the means for students to synthesize and integrate course content.

The use of technology in the classroom offers the opportunity for nurse educators to engage students not only cognitively, but affectively. The engagement of the affective domain, which encompasses attitudes, values and beliefs, has been shown to influence nursing performance and influence patient perceptions of care delivered (Luzon and Leton, 2016). The Institute of Medicine through its Future of Nursing (2011) report encouraged nurse educators to make connections among knowledge, clinical reasoning, and practice. In addition, the report emphasized the importance of teamwork and active learning in order to help students apply fundamental concepts to a variety of situations. Thus, nurse educators must rethink traditional teaching-learning strategies.

Robb (2013) found that students desire course content to be taught as it relates to professional practice especially using faculty personal stories. Millennials, born in the 1980s and 1990s, want to be actively engaged in their learning and be entertained, and they embrace technology, prefer teamwork, and like challenges. Innovative teaching strategies are far more effective for student learning with this group of students (Ebert, 2016, McCurry and Martins, 2010). The challenge for nurse educators is to address the learning needs of Millennials, which are often most students in the class, along with the preferences of other generations.

The purpose of this project was to encourage knowledge transfer from course to course and to improve student engagement in the classroom. Content from Fundamentals of Nursing, Pathophysiology, and Physical Assessment were included to demonstrate the integration of multiple nursing course content.

The goals of the project were to (1) develop a multimedia teaching strategy for use in the classroom on the topic of tuberculosis (TB), (2) integrate content from Health Assessment, Pathophysiology, and Fundamentals of Nursing; (3) implement this strategy in the Fundamentals of Nursing course in the infection control class; and (4) evaluate student response to this multimedia teaching strategy.

Section snippets

Project Development Process

A University Teaching Innovation Award was used to develop this multimedia collaborative teaching strategy between the School of Nursing (SON) faculty and the University's Center for eLearning Instructional Designer. The purpose of the University Teaching Innovation Award is to develop innovative teaching strategies to promote engaged learning and enhance student success. This project integrated multiple forms of technology into one format based on case studies and lecture material as the

Student Response to Teaching Strategy

At the completion of the multimodal class, students were given evaluation forms developed by the faculty to determine whether the module aided the students' engagement with the content, and their ability to integrate information from previous courses with the current course.

Discussion

Student responses supported the use of multi-media strategies to aid in understanding of course content. Of interest is that younger learners considered the mix of lecture with multi-media strategies as their most comfortable method of learning. This finding is consistent with described characteristics of the Millennial generation, which currently comprises most of the population of student nurses. These students have grown up using technology such as computers and cell phones and require

Conclusion

Use of multimedia learning strategies in the classroom engaged students by actively involving them in the learning process. This study supports previous work that found that learning objectives were met at a higher level with the incorporation of innovative teaching strategies, especially technology (Ebert, 2016, McCurry and Martins, 2010). Overall, students voiced a preference for all instructional materials to be presented in an animated format which is consistent with the Millennial

Funding

This project was funded by a University Teaching Innovation Award, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Acknowledgements

Heather Caprette, MFA, Senior Instructional Designer, Center for eLearning, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio.

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