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Monday, November 2, 2009: 2:40 PM
Learning Objective 1: identify how a virtual community can be used to mentor and inform part-time teaching faculty.
Learning Objective 2: describe the benefits of using technology and the virtual community to connect full-time and part-time teaching faculty in meaningful relationships.
Schools of Nursing are challenged to balance the demand for increasing enrolments with limited numbers of faculty prepared at the doctoral level available to teach. Clinical instructors are valued members of the teaching team often used to fill the void, but are part-time and most likely employed elsewhere when not teaching. This arrangement has consequences for students, the school and the part-time instructors. Students have limited access to the teacher who is not regularly on campus while the school often struggles to engage the part-time teacher in meetings and activities outside of the clinical day. The clinical teacher may be left feeling that they are not valued as part of the teaching team and disconnected from relationships with faculty and students. Our school is attempting to bridge this gap through the creation of a virtual community linking all teaching faculty. This presentation will describe the development and maintenance of the on-line community and provide examples of strategies to enrich the teaching and learning experiences for the entire teaching team.