Teaching Tomorrow’s Nurses: A Technology-Enhanced Approach

In this episode of NLN Nursing Edge Unscripted, host Steven Palazzo welcomes Drs. Andrew Bobal and Jennifer O’Rourke, authors of Teaching Tomorrow’s Nurses: A Technology-Enhanced Approach. They explore the integration of technology in nursing education, discussing strategies to engage students in large classrooms through polling, discussion boards, and gamification, while emphasizing the importance of aligning technology with learning objectives. The conversation highlights AI’s evolving role in education, encouraging faculty to leverage it for case study development, personalized learning, and assessment preparation. The guests stress the need for flexible, accessible, and affordable technology that adapts to diverse learning environments. The episode concludes with practical advice for educators: start small, experiment with technology, and integrate AI responsibly to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes.

Teaching Tomorrow’s Nurses: A Technology-Enhanced Approach is available at NLN Press: https://nln.lww.com/Teaching-Tomorrow-s-Nurses/p/9781975248277.

Dedicated to excellence in nursing, the National League for Nursing is the leading organization for nurse faculty and leaders in nursing education. Find past episodes of the NLN Nursing EDge podcast online. Get instant updates by following the NLN on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube. For more information, visit NLN.org.

Transcript

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I'd like to welcome everyone to this episode of NLN podcast Nursing Edge Unscripted. I'm your  host, Dr. Steven Palazzo, a member of the editorial board for nursing education perspectives in this  episode we will be discussing the book Teaching Tomorrow's Nurses. This book seeks to guide the  nurse educator in creating student learning outcomes using technology integration in the  classroom, simulation, and clinical spaces. We are fortunate today to have the authors with  us to discuss aspects of their book. Dr. Jennifer O'Rourke is an associate professor and associate  dean of the Parkinson's School of Health Science and Public Health at Loyola University Chicago.  Dr. Andrew Bobel is an experienced educator and adjunct professor at Widener University School  of Nursing in Chester, Pennsylvania. Welcome to you both and thank you for your time today. Thank  you for having us. Thanks for having us Steve. Appreciate it. Absolutely. So you know I found  your book interesting and lots of great helpful tips. I like how you broke it down into there was  like 10 key messages, very specific to the type of technology integration that you were discussing in  more detail...The question I have before we get into some of the other questions specifically  about the book is I teach a class right now of 168 students in pathophysiology. How do we  use technology and what type of technology effectively in a large class of this size to  engage the student learner? Good question, but I do not envy you teaching that many students at  one time. I like 25 so I guess I'll start and then Andrew will come in because he can specifically  speak to, I know he's assisted faculty to to think about these challenges. There's, I think,  there's a variety of different ways you can use technology for a large class like that. You know,  an easy way to use technology is an entry or exit ticket into a classroom. So evaluating some basic  knowledge when they come to your class where you quickly as a the educator know maybe what are the  gaps in their learning that I want to focus on during my class. And then same thing at the end  of the day, you know, at the end of the class. Maybe what are still some of those gaps that you could  then address in follow-up conversation? So you know, a simple poll tool you could use you know  depending on your learning management system, those those can be easily built into your platform.  But then within the classroom with that large amount of students, and I do not like to  lecture. I do not like to hear myself talk. And so using small breakout rooms so if you're in person  just creating those opportunities for students to break into groups or online using you know  discussion rooms to create those opportunities for small group discussions, you know, I also like to  use problem based learning. So giving a group a problem that needs to be addressed and then  they're able to not regurgitate what they read, but actually apply that content to a contextual  situation. And so how they could use technology is a variety of ways. You know, they could use a  whiteboard, a simple whiteboard where they're just taking notes on the whiteboard that then  is shared with the rest of the class. PowerPoint presentations, you know, and little audio clips.  Little video clips they could even create podcasts as students where then they those could be shared  with the class. So Andrew, I'll pass it to you because I know you also have ton of examples  like that. Yeah, for sure. I really appreciate that Jenny. I think that you know really good points  there. And I, you know, you start off with one of my bread and butter. It's the exit ticket.  You know, it's gaining the understanding of the students and checking for their understanding,  but also double dipping on informing your own instruction, right? It's where are the gaps but  then also what do I need to get better at? A lot of those are again, what do we have at our fingertips?  A lot of us are Office 365 campuses or Google campuses whatever that might be so you   create a simple form right and that form is then linked to a QR code that QR code can be published  on your PowerPoint, can be bring up brought up at the beginning of class so students can scan and  bring that stuff in. Those forms have come a very long way, right. It used to just be that, hey, here's  an Excel document and here's all the data that came along. Now we get all the the AI capabilities  inside of those forms so it creates the word cloud for you of the terms that it continuously  sees. So when you have that 168 students, which is obviously a lot of columns and rows to look  at in an Excel document, you can see those words that are much larger in the word cloud and the  emphasis to where you need to put your teaching or where some of those gaps are. I'm also a massive  component of any sort of gamification. I you know. I like to see the students up and moving. I  like to see those intrinsic motivators getting going. So you can really point to some of those  audience response systems as far as Kahoot, you know, and Poll Everywhere and things like that  where you can really get those students engaged. and I think Jenny made a really good point. The  rote lecture and the standing in front of you know, that's there's always room for that, right.  That's not going to go anywhere. There's always going to be parts of that, but we need to break  up those pieces, right. We live in the TikTok world is what I referred to it as your students aren't  sitting there and retaining the things that you're saying in minute 48. They checked out at minute  eight, right. So we have to find these opportunities to get these, this microlearning, right, within the  section so is that watching a short video before they come to class and then and then talking about  that with a group of students before you come back to the whole group? Are they watching it with  a group of students in courses? So a really big component of some of the video aspects that you  can kind of put in for some of those large groups, but it can be tricky especially with the 168. I  can understand that you have a little bit more flexibility with the smaller groups, but certainly  some of those tools out there that can help with grouping or some of the Socratic questioning as  far as calling on students. So I'm a big component of Triptico, which is a product out of  England and it's big in the K-12 world, but gives you a lot of those kind of wheels, right. You can  get all the students names on a wheel and you can click spin and it calls on a student or it gets  them to group them together. You say five groups, six people and everybody moves around and splits  up so it provides a little bit of that visual incentive that kind of goes along with some of the  gamification aspects as well. Right. Talk about the, you mentioned the student polling this you  know the different Poll Everywhere and Kahoot has gamification. And I use Slido in the  classroom because that's what the university supports. Are they effective tools for engagement? I find that they  can be very effective for engagement, but how about for student assessing student learning outcomes?  Yeah, I think that you know it's a double-edged sword, right. Just like with any technology, you  don't want death by tech, right. So if you're coming in and you're doing a Poll Everywhere you're doing  a Kahoot every class, it loses its pizzazz, right. It's like, "Oh here's another Kahoot. Let's jump  into this." But I think it can, you know, outside of just the content, right, especially in our  in our BSN program, we're making good test takers too, right. So not only is it learning the content,  it's about discussing the question, right. What are the important parts here? What if we changed,  you know, this part of the question stem? What if we changed the age of this client or the or the  previous condition that it might be. So not only is it the content and establishing kind of  you know following those gaps of knowledge. It's also, okay, what's the question asking? What does  this look like? How do I think about this as a good test taker? So I think that you can really hit it  on both edges there. Yeah. I do think it's important though to go back to like the fundamentals, right.  So as educators, what we should be doing in the classroom is really about our objectives. So what  are we trying to accomplish today? How are we going to evaluate the students actually learned?  And so technology is great. I use technology a lot. I won't say I'm the best in terms of like  my technology savvy, like I learn as I go, but I'm not the best. Like I'm not Andrew. But so I choose...  I tend to use things that are maybe a little bit more simple right, not super complicated for me  as a facilitator. But the key there is - does it make sense for my class? I'm not just going to do a Poll  Everywhere every single class because the students will actually by the end will hate you for for  using that poll. They won't want to use it again. So I really try to change it up and try something  different. Like, I'll just give you an example. I've used an internal discussion board you know  that's built into my platform, but then I've used something called Padlet, which is almost like a  live discussion board and the students love that. But sometimes after the third time it's like,  no we got to go back to the original one or we have to do...what I, the other thing I've tried is  audio discussion boards. So rather than just write a discussion board they actually have to do a verbal  discussion board. So I think you just have to be cognizant. It just goes to your objectives  and using technology appropriately in when it's needed. Great. Yeah. I just want to jump in  there real quick Jenny to touch on the discussion boards just because again, this is a facet  where especially on the grad side we talk about this, right. It's 500 words, four scholarly sources,  respond to someone by Tuesday make another response by Thursday, you know those kinds of  things. And again, just like we talked about with the other things, there's room for that, right. You  have to be able to clearly write and do all that, but there's also room for articulating  your responses, right. When certainly, when you become an an expert in the field or you become  a nurse manager or you're the leader in the room you want to be able to clearly articulate your  thoughts and be able to concisely come across with the information you're trying to portray.  So that's an area to practice that, right. It's not only about the content and it's okay this is a  place where I can practice talking clearly. This is a place I don't need to be so long-winded,  guilty, right. And some of those skills that kind of come along with some of that answering  and some of those facets, not just the content- wise, but making a good nurse educator or making  a good person and providing feedback bedside. Some of those things can be practiced as a student by  giving them multiple ways to respond on some of those discussion board topics, right. Right, you know  AI is moving quickly. As we know, it's here. It's not going anywhere. It's part of our life now and  it's going to be increasingly a part of our life. What are your thoughts about the role of AI in  the classroom and how can nurse educators use AI tools and approaches effectively for the students and how do our students use it? I mean, I'll tell you what I do with it, but I want to hear what your  thoughts are on it. So it's funny when Andrew and I got started thinking about this book, you know,  and conceptualizing it which was two, about two years ago, AI was out there but the difference  in how AI has just grown exponentially in two years. So there's some AI in the book, but I'm  going to be honest, it was published before we knew a lot of what we know now.  And actually how to incorporate AI so I do try to incorporate AI quite a bit because I truly  believe that faculty need...students are using it, so faculty need to get over this, oh we shouldn't  be using it. No. Faculty need to know students are using it. Get comfortable using it and learn to be  able to use it and integrate it into their courses so it can be used effectively. And not... and then we  don't punish end up punishing students, which I unfortunately, my role as administrator   I often have to address in terms of plagiarism with AI and things like that. So I'll just give  you some examples of how I've used it and or how my colleagues have used it. So I teach a  public health course and students need to develop basically a map like they develop a problem based  community project and how they're going to address that problem. And then they have to kind of map it  out how they're like each area and so what I have them do is actually do it on their own as a group  and then I have them go into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini and actually say develop a path model  for me based on this problem. And it, you know, shoots out in 45 seconds this lovely mode,l but  it's not perfect. There's lots of errors you know. And so then the their role is really look at both  of these. What are you missing in yours that maybe the AI tool school did a little bit better job on  and really they do some comparing and contrasting. The other way I've done that  with literature review writing is tables. You know, our students, we really drill that in develop your  lit review table, but sometimes I find that that becomes an exercise and they're not learning  just by developing the table. They really need to understand what's in that table. So you can use AI  to help develop those tables for you, but then again, you have them analyze on the end side of  that tool what's been developed? Is it accurate? Now I'm going to synthesize this information. So it's a  better use of their time, in my opinion. And so I'm sure... and test question development. I'm seeing that  more and more and more. I know there's some ethical issues related to that, but I know Andrew works in  in the undergrad program a lot and I'm sure you're using it quite a bit Andrew. Yeah, for sure, really  appreciate all those thoughts. And you know we're definitely overlap there right and  there's lots of conversations around it. There's multiple webinars every day, you know,  whatever you want to watch or listen to it's out there. And I think it's about kind of shifting our  thinking to start, right. We need to embrace this. It's not going anywhere. It's not something that  is meant to hurt us, right. It's something that is a tool in our toolbox is what I like to say.  And we know that as students and as faculty members and nurse educators and nurse leaders  and really any field, it's going to be used right. So it's not going to replace you, but I've heard  people say that someone will replace you who's using it if you're not using it, right. So it's  about finding those niches that work best for you and I think that nursing already touches on  that, right. We look at the AACN essentials. The domain 8 is informatics and that's got  AI right in it right there, so it that's not going anywhere at all. So it's really about how do we use  it, how do we embrace it? And again, I can discuss some of the things that I see being done, and  really this is twofold, right. I'm in two roles. I'm both an adviser for my undergraduate students and  accelerated students, so some second degree students, so different conversations there  of course. But then also working in faculty development. So let me talk about both those ends.  From the faculty development side, a lot of places we point to is developing case studies, right.  Sometimes those are hard to write. Sometimes those are hard to get going, things like that. We are a  a Microsoft 365 campus so we have Copilot at our fingertips, similar to ChatGPT. It's, you know, the  generative AI scope of hey, write me a case study of a 65-year-old man with congenital heart disease  who just came in you know with weak knees or something like that, right. And you can go in and  change those variables and all those things and it will write a complete case study for you given,  again, just like Jenny touched on, it's a start, right. It's a skeleton so make sure you're going  through and make sure those things are there and and that you know what you're seeing is accurate.  And you do that as the expert. On the student side, and wow do I have students who are like, how do I  use this, what can I use this for. And particularly I'm working with a bunch of freshmen right now who  are in anatomy and physiology 1 and anatomy and physiology 2. And as you can imagine, that gets them  starting in their nursing career and some struggle with that first science and kind of grasping that.  and one of our conversations was you know I really struggle on tests a lot of the tests are multiple  choice questions, but the study guides or things that we do in class are very open-ended. You know,  we don't have multiple choice questions to give to practice or get examples from or things like  that. And my response was, well, did you ever try and take one of those open-ended questions and  ask your Copilot to create five multiple choice questions from that content? And then that gets the  ball rolling and thinking about that and I looked at that with one of my students and she said, "Well."  I said, "Well, what's something you're studying right now?" She said "Joints." I said "Okay, well  let's ask Copilot can you create five multiple choice questions on joints?" And here it comes and  believe it or not, guess what the first questions were? They were about the joint commissions and  NATO and all of that right. So you have to get a little bit more specific that we're actually  talking about the A and P side so then it got into the ball and socket joint and she said, "Oh I remember  that." I said "Okay, well here's five specific questions on the ball and socket joint. Maybe  you need a video. Can you give me three videos on that?" It gave me three videos that were all shorter  than 5 minutes on that content which again, you could Google search, but you're making your way  through all the weeds to find that stuff right. So some of those generative AIs and and the machine  learning side can put some of those exemplars at your fingertips a little bit quicker. So I can say  that that's probably the the majority of the way that I'm seeing those being used as both a student  and a faculty member. Yeah let me just add sorry one comment on that. I think that it brings up  how I'm also seeing students use this is that it's allowing them to create content around  their own learning needs. So as faculty we would give these, you know, study guides that  are all written but now students can actually use that and create visuals that help them understand  because I'm a visual learner or they create some audio clips or maps, map you can create a concept  map so it it allows this universal design for learning to really come through and allow for  flexible standardization of and letting the students develop content around their own  needs, which is so important I think for for us in this climate and environment for students. Well, I  appreciate you said that because that is the thing I find I'm teaching my students on how to use AI,  for my particular course is pathophysiology, is yeah, you know, prompting the generative AI to  get to the place that you need to be for where you're at with the content in the course. I, you  know, I really don't care what they use as long as they can understand and apply the concepts  and so ChatGPT or whatever, any generative AI tool you use can help that student start from give me a  basic you know understanding of heart failure at the level of this and then you can break get it  more specific and then, like you said, having them create questions. And... you know I also say  make sure you ask for answers and rationales for those questions and then use that information and fact  check it with your slides, your notes, your other things like that to make sure that it's accurate  and you're not just relying on the information you're getting from ChatGPT. But you know they  download my slides now into ChatGPT and ask them to make flash cards, all kinds of things, which I  think is wonderful. I wish I had that tool when I was in school. You know, someone who wants to make  flash cards and I learned from flash cards, that's a great way of prompting some a machine like that.  So last thing I want to ask you is what is one technology-enhanced strategy that you would  emphasize that nurse educators can put into effect immediately. So if I was watching this and I'm really  pressed for time and I'm overwhelmed, what's one thing we could do in the classroom tomorrow  that would make an impact. You want to start there Jenny or you want me to start? I'll let you start.  I got to think about that one because there's so many. Yeah. There's a lot out there. I  think that probably... You only get to pick one though. I know I only  get to pick one. Yes, I'm going to pick one that  falls under a large umbrella, right. And that's embracing the mobile learning side of it  right. A lot of times we're sitting in front of a computer or we're sitting at a desktop or even at  a laptop but all of us have a device in our hands at all times, right. So finding those opportunities  where we can utilize that device whether it's, you know, using the Quizlet app on the phone or  using the Canvas app on the phone or whatever it is to, you know, take it out of just, okay, I need to  be in front of a computer to do these things. I point my students that way a lot because a lot of  times it's hey, study during the commercial or hey, study during the ad. Find that little blip of time  where you know you can take out and you can do a couple flashcards maybe. You're standing in line at  a restaurant or maybe you're sitting at the dining table you know by yourself. So not necessarily  having the large device in front of you, but embracing some of those mobile needs. I think that  we can put at our fingertips especially in the higher end right. I think that again, we're very  used to the large device so we can embrace those a little bit more right. Thank you. Yeah that's... it's  still a hard one. I'm not sure I can answer like what I would do tomorrow because I mean I do use  different types of technology. I think what I would as a faculty what I would go in thinking is using  something that first off is flexible use, so it can be used on a computer or mobile doesn't cost  any money because most of these AI tools right now do not cost anythingo. But making sure it's not  a cost to the student because some of, some of those additional apps are costing students now and that  it's flexible, flexible in use for students. So it's going to meet multiple needs of my students and  then me being comfortable and the students being comfortable with using those tools. The other  thing I think is important if you are going to be using ChatGPT is having something clear in  your syllabus as faculty so what are the the times when I say you can use it and what are the times  when really you shouldn't be using it and how to site it because that's important if you're using  it you should be citing it 100%. So maybe just more tools around how to use it great. I appreciate that. Well, I want to thank both of you for joining us. I appreciate your time and expertise and broadening  our understanding of this work and how we can enhance the integration of technology into our  current classroom settings. To our listeners, if you have not had the opportunity please  look for the author's work, "Teaching Tomorrow's Nurses." You can go to the NLN's website type in  NLN bookstore and it'll be right there for you to peruse and purchase. Anything you want to say any  last minute or last messages? Just say get started using it. Start trying. You're not going to break  anything. Just, you know, have fun with it. Embrace it. Absolutely. Thanks for having us today Steve. Yeah.