Learning Objective #1: The learner will be able to explore how an on-line modified Problem-Based Learing (PBL)format may facilitate the development of necessary metacognitive skills in Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Students enabling them to critique learning skills, situations, and problems in ways that may not have not have been recognized or considered.

Learning Objective #2: The learner will be able to aquire the skills necessary to enhance the mental processes of their Acute Care Nurse Practitioner students as efficient and effective problem solving skills are paramount.

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Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to demonstrate how Nurse Practitioner (NP) Masters Faculty can utilize evolving instructional methodologies to enable students to uncover how they acquire knowledge in order to make clinical judgments. The authors evoke student metacognition using artist expression, self-reflection and aesthetics to evaluate a pilot on-line synchronous modified problem-based learning (PBL) format.

Summary: The Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) is expected to handle complex and often novel clinical situations. Delayed clinical decision-making or faulty decision- making may lead to deleterious patient outcomes. Problem recognition, efficient and effective medical and nursing literature retrieval, critical appraisal of the evidence, diagnostic reasoning, and patient centered clinical decision-making are therefore, major tenets of ACNP education. It is well documented in the literature that clinicians are often unaware of how they acquire vital information and knowledge and how they make crucial clinical judgments and decisions. The evaluation of experiences in a 10-week modified PBL format, utilizing artistic expression, helped students make implicit knowledge and experience explicit and enabled them to think critically and creatively. This presentation will explore the methods employed and the ways in which students recognized and developed alternative ways to recognize and view their knowledge, how they learn, their learning deficiencies, their decision-making skills, and their assumptions and expectations of the learning of others.

Implications for NP Educators: ACNPs are required to be the decision makers for patients with increasingly higher levels of acuity and complexity. It is reasonable to suggest that NP educators pay closer attention to the mental processes of their students as efficient and effective problem solving skills are paramount. Summative evaluation of a modified PBL process, through reflection and the use of art, may facilitate the development of metacognitive skills necessary to critique learning skills, situations, and problems in ways that may not have not have been recognized or considered.