FIT Group Experience

The FIT Group experience has been a challenge because the group is so large. It's hard to collaborate on one document with six different people. We used Google documents to help with this but always seem to have a problem at the very end when finalizing the document. It's hard to coordinate 6 schedules amongst full-time working students online. This is the largest group that I have worked with on a project and I think that it is too big - 3 to 4 students would be ideal for me! It's hard to make the project flow when its been fragmented and divvied up for equal responsibility.

Special Topic Presentation

I decided to do my special topic presentation on Simulation in Nursing Health Care Education. I had a lot of fun putting this presentation together - gathering information for my fellow classmates to show them what simulation is all about and finding good examples to show them in action. I find the history of simulation quite interesting - manikins in health care were first designed by a homemaker who did dolls in her spare time. As the field and technology grew, so did the capabilities of the manikins.

Things like Second Life and videoconferencing have allowed for a more virtual simulation experience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2jN7L80bH8

I also got to show the class what the debriefing process is all about using the College of Nursing's Bline server:
http://bline.nursing.wayne.edu

Although my presentation focused on simulation in healthcare, it is definitely an expandable technology and is used throughout so many other fields. Meredith actually also did her presentation on simulation in military training. It's a very useful and robust teaching method.

FIT Project

Working with my group on the FIT project, I am able to step out of the box and look at the current course set up. Throughout the semester, I have voiced my frustrations with the class: feeling like I'm not really doing anything because of restrictions placed by the instructor and feeling like the students don't really participate. Working on the project, I'm looking at the course structure as the cause of the latter problem in stead of faulting the students themselves. I think that they are hindered by the delivery methods used in the class. For it being an emerging technologies class, very little emerging technology is used in it. The class relies on asynchronous discussion boards with PowerPoint Presentations and class discussions. I think that using other methods of content deployment like video, podcasts, Wimba, etc. would increase class participation. I think that the students would also get more out of an emerging technology class if they were actually using the technology.

Challenges

I'm feeling a little challenged right now in my FIT role. I'm not sure if underwhelmed is the correct word to describe my role right now or not; I don't feel like I'm really doing anything of value for the students though. The role assigned was to assist two groups via the discussion board. I was assigned to the first group; their assignment was already done and posted by the time the FITs were given access to the Discussion Board. I attempted to keep conversation in the discussion board threads going, offering other view points that I have from my professional work. Although this did add to the dialogue, I'm not sure if it's really helping the students with their work.

Halfway there!

We are halfway through the semester and things are getting very exciting! I have been having a a great time participating as a facilitator in training in Professor Boileau's class. The readings that we have been assigned have been a great help in this FIT role. I particularly liked "Intersubjectivity: Facilitating Knowledge Construction in Online Environments." The authors' point that instructors, learners, methods, and technology must all work together and in sync in order to have a successful and shared knowledge experience is key to courses like Professor Boileau's. In order for Professor Boileau's students to have a successful learning experience, the instructor needs to let the students know what s/he fully expects of them.

"Designs, Management Tactics, and Strategies in Asynchronous Learning Discussions" has also been a good guide in assisting the facilitation of the asynchronous discussion. "The goal of online discussion is to promote constructive thinking and maximize interactions between and among instructors, students, contents, and interface...Through online asynchronous discussion, students can be engaged in opportunities to externalize their knowledge in a variety of contexts that allows them to be self reflective." The discussion boards are structured on the article's guidelines in regards to structure. There are structure statements so that the students have a guided discussion; the structure is not set up, however, to restrict any conversation amongst the students. The only thing that I haven't seen as a part of the online discussion is a frequency guideline (i.e. how many times each student must post). Part of me tends to like a non-frequency requirement. That way students aren't so concerned with getting their "five" posts up. I think that this way they are more focused on making meaningful posts. On the other hand, I can see where some students who are not used to discussion boards may need some set benchmarks to get them comfortable with that type of conversation.

My goal for the rest of the semester is to drive as much meaningful conversation as possible.

ARRA Grant Funds - Nurse Training

The College that I work for just received an ARRA grant from HRSA totaling $281,630.00 to enhance health professional training for nurses and nurse practitioners. Funds will be used to purchase new high fidelity clinical simulation equipment aimed at specialty education in pediatric and neonatal areas and incorporate use of these new technologies in a Children’s Hospital of Michigan nurse residency program as well as in our WSU undergraduate and graduate nursing onsite and distance learning programs.

This funding will substantially benefit training of nursing students, thus strengthening the nursing workforce, improving nurse retention, and enhancing quality of patient care. It will also significantly strengthen our undergraduate and graduate specialty education in neonatal, pediatric nursing and nurse midwifery as well as in distance education centers in Marquette, Grand Rapids, and Flint.

This is also very exciting as we were the only College at WSU to receive an ARRA: Equipment to Enhance Training for Health Professionals, grant.  These manikins and simulations would assist in the "Doing" part of the R2D2 model.

Budget Impact on New Technology Support

One of the greatest challenges that I face at my place of employment is my ever-shrinking budget.  For the past three years, we have been tightening the belt in certain areas; especially with personnel staff.  Ironically, the services offered to faculty and students have grown: lecture capture and videoconferencing in all of our classrooms, Human Patient Simulation Laboratories, Electronic Medical Record tracking systems, etc.  The College that I work for often gets grants to pay for all of this equipment; the one issue that always gets overlooked is:  Who is going to support this equipment?

When I started in this department three years ago as the instructional designer, there were eighteen employees (7 FTEs, 4 full-time technicians, and 7 student assistants).  There are now eight (3 FTEs and 5 student assistants).  Our services have also increased sevenfold.  I think that this disconnect between equipment and support staff comes from a lack of understanding about Instructional Designers and Information Technology support staff.  It seems like if anything can be plugged in, it is assumed that anyone in IT can support it.  What people don't realize is how broad IT is - there are designers, programmers, systems administrators, desktop support staff, etc.

I went to a training today with faculty on EndNote - I've never used the software before and wanted to get up to speed on it for my own purposes.  More than one comment was made about having to ask me later for help on the software.  I just smiled and said okay but I wanted to say, "I know as much as you do at this point!".  I wish that I had a budget where I could hire more staff to be specialized in certain areas.  Right now, I feel like a Jill of all trades, as does the rest of my department.  I also wish I had more staff so that I could have them research new technology for the faculty.  I had a faculty member show some interest in the classroom response systems; I spent 2-days trying to become an expert on them so that I could answer all of the faculty's questions on integrating them in her class.  This lack of budget support for staffing leads to a more reactive response from my department; I definitely prefer being more proactive!