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.