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.