Engaging Students in the Classroom Using Active, Team-Based Learning Strategies

As students enter into nursing school faculty are charged with socializing students into the professional role of nurses while helping students develop a sound knowledge base of critical nursing concepts.  Along with teaching students critical nursing concepts, faculty must also assist students to develop skills in communication, professionalism, teamwork, and collaboration in order to be a safe and effective member of the interprofessional health care team.  Research has shown that a transformation to learner-centered, active learning strategies must be incorporated into nursing curriculums for students to meet future demands required of new nurses to provide safe, quality patient care.  By providing students with the opportunities to consistently practice communication skills, giving constructive peer feedback, and dealing with conflict in a safe environment, students are better able to transition to practice already possessing some of these crucial skills. This session will discuss strategies implemented in a beginning level nursing course to create a learner-centered classroom environment that engages students while focusing on communication, teamwork, and collaboration. Strategies that will be discussed include: Team-based learning activities, use of various technologies-including Socrative in the classroom to address different learning styles, constructive peer review, collaborative testing, formative evaluation methods, and creating a classroom environment based on respect and authentic learning.  This session will provide examples of active learning strategies and how to modify existing assignments for more engaged students.  Sharing of strategies, evaluation tools, grading rubrics, and a discussion of modified team-based learning will be addressed.  In addition, a detailed discussion of the use of collaborative testing and how it can be utilized in nursing courses along with data related to student outcomes will be provided.  The educational technologies used in the classroom, along with strategies implemented to create a classroom environment based on mutual respect supportive of deep learning will also be addressed.