SS: Supporting Innovative Technology with Contemporary Pedagogy: A Layered Learning Approach

Description/Overview: Nursing educators, and others teaching in the clinical health sciences, are becoming increasingly interested in the use of educational games, particularly those leveraging multimedia technology such as mobile media platforms. Students enjoy games and often become the driving force for the inclusion of game-based learning within the curriculum (Snider, 2003; Thuma, 2012; Wecker, 2012). Games themselves, by their very nature, provide both an evaluative and summative experience for teachers and students. Games also provide immediate and just-in-time feedback through a series of rules and consequences (Bauman 2012). Games are used to evaluate the player as a learner; success is evaluated through performance (Squire, 2006). Competency, in the context of performance evaluation, is a familiar and contextually relevant premise found throughout nursing education (Bauman & Ralston-Berg, 2014; Bauman & Games, 2011; Games & Bauman, 2011). As such, this workshop will explore how contemporary learning theory and frameworks support learning as performance (Squire, 2006) and move beyond the discussion of digital literacy (Gee, 2003 towards the perspective of digital wisdom (Prensky, 2012, 2014). While multimedia game-based learning approaches are appealing to students and becoming a sought after tool for educators, understanding the theoretical constructs for their integration within the curriculum can be a daunting task. This workshop will provide participants with an overview of contemporary game-based learning theory to situate curriculum objectives from the perspective of nursing education using the layered learning model (Bauman & Ralston-Berg, 2014). The layered learning model allows for flexibility in the education design to best reach the differing learning styles and abilities of the participants. Increasing in cognitive difficulty, the layers will provide a foundation of basic information as it relates to game-based learning, then move on to problem solving and culminate with critical thinking and application to the real-world. The workshop faculty will facilitate an interactive game development exercise using a narrative storyboarding technique. The exercise will allow participants to explore facets of technology integration that address important variables such as solving challenges found within the curriculum, critical clinical thinking, and the paradigm of innovation and curricular fit (Bauman & Ralston-Berg, 2014, Ralston-Berg & Lara, 2012).