SPECIAL SESSION: Advancing the Science through the National Nursing Education Research Network

Description/Overview: The purpose of this session is to describe the aims of the newly created National Nursing Education Research Network, the data collection methods that the Network will use, the benefits of Network membership, and the opportunities that the Network will provide for educators and researchers to access the data and advance the science of nursing education. Session participants will also be engaged in identifying the most crucial research questions facing academic nursing today. Background: The clarion call to transform nursing education, as issued by the IOM’s report The Future of Nursing presents immense challenges and opportunities for researchers and educators across the U.S. and around the world. Confronted with severe faculty shortages, inadequate clinical placement opportunities, and outdated pedagogies, nursing education must be transformed in ways that abate current challenges. Therefore, it is imperative that nurse educators partner with nursing education researchers to design, test, implement, and evaluate evidence-based strategies and academic structures that will enhance active student learning, interprofessional teamwork, seamless academic progression, the effective use of educational technology, and more. By advancing the science of nursing education, schools of nursing will be better equipped to prepare a nursing workforce with the competencies required by a reformed healthcare system. Problem: Unfortunately, however, the science of nursing education has been traditionally constrained by insufficient funding which has contributed to single-site studies, small sample sizes, inadequately developed and tested outcome measures, and limited data collection and analysis techniques. Moreover, there are limited opportunities for schools of nursing to benchmark their initiatives and outcomes with those of similar schools of nursing. Response: The National Nursing Education Research Network (NNERN) is developed, with the aid of a planning grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, to provide a collaborative and cost-efficient mechanism for creating a large, national data set necessary to generate sound educational evidence. The Network will collect annual survey data from the faculty and students of member schools and make these de-identified data available to member schools for their own analysis via a secure web portal. Mechanisms have also been created that allow nursing education researchers at non-member schools to request de-identified data. Additionally, Network staff will leverage and analyze the data to address crucial educational research questions as determined by a consensus of member schools. Importantly, the Network will have the potential to employ powerful longitudinal designs to investigate important curricular, instructional, and policy-related questions over time. Dialogue: The benefits of Network membership, the benefits of big data, and the mechanisms for data access will be discussed. Participants will be engaged in collaboratively identifying the most critical education-focused research questions with the potential to inform quality improvement efforts, faculty staffing plans, updated pedagogies, active learning, and student and faculty satisfaction.