(Faculty Spotlight is a series of articles focused on highlighting faculty at FHSU that are using technology in interesting ways. Faculty Spotlight is intended to be a monthly series, so check back often to see if your peers are doing any intriguing activities with technology. If you have a faculty member you would like to recommend for Faculty Spotlight, contact Teaching Innovation and Learning Technologies at tigerlearn@fhsu.edu. Faculty Spotlight graphic by Cari Kelly.)
By Nathan Riedel –
How do you coordinate a group project with students all across the state? This was the issue facing Dr. Jenny Manry, chair of the department of Nursing, and Dr. Valerie Yu, professor of nursing. In 2015, the Department of Nursing gained approval to house FHSU’s first doctoral program: the Doctor of Nursing Practice. “Virtual and doctoral courses are often focused on written coursework,” says Dr. Yu. For the course NURS 954 Advanced Nursing Leadership, Dr. Manry wanted to try something different. “These students are our future leaders,” explains Dr. Yu, “It is critical that they are able to collaborate with other health care disciplines to bring research to the bedside to improve patient outcomes.”
Dr. Manry developed an idea: Project Club. Students were placed into groups of four. Each student submitted an idea to Dr. Yu for their group. Dr. Yu then selected one idea for the group, and the student whose idea was selected became the Project Manager. The student selected to be Project Manager would then designate roles to the rest of the group: stakeholder, late adopter, and early adopter. Dr. Manry wanted the students to be able to provide video recordings of their projects as if they were actually presenting an idea in real life. As stated before though, the students were spread across Kansas. Dr. Yu specified their locations as ranging “from metropolitan areas such Kansas City and Wichita to rural areas in Eastern and Western Kansas.”
With a little help from Learning Technologies, Dr. Manry and Dr. Yu were able to make this idea a reality. The first task was providing the students a way to meet in a virtual space and record. “The groups used Zoom to record… [a meeting that] was 5 to 7 minutes,” explained Yu. Next, the students needed to present their projects in an environment capable of both peer and instructor feedback. “Each person was to evaluate 2 other groups,” says Dr. Yu. To accommodate feedback, Yellowdig, a social learning platform for Blackboard, was utilized to both present their videos and comment on each others’ projects. “I think we achieved the major objective to examine the different roles and their contribution to a project,” claims Dr. Yu.
Dr. Yu thinks the students really benefited from this project. “The students are working toward identifying their DNP Project topic and this assignment is designed to help them choose a topic and explore how will they get others in their organization to come on board with the change,” explained Dr. Yu. Additionally, the students seemed to embraced the creativity of the assignment. “Some…students had written scripts…[others] really dived into their roles and were very enthusiastic for their projects,” reported Dr. Yu. Overall, Dr. Yu feels the assignment was a success. “I would use this assignment again,” says Dr. Yu, “Next time we will have more discussion about defining the roles prior to forming groups…[and] I would like to post a sample video from this semester.”
For more information on the DNP: https://www.fhsu.edu/nursing/dnp/
For more information on Zoom and Yellowdig: http://tigerlearn.fhsu.edu/kb/social-learning-tools/
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