What is free time?

The life of an instructor seems to be jammed packed.  Starting in September, you hit the ground running and don't stop until the final marks are entered.  I tried taking a weekend off once and I fell horribly behind my marking.  Taking time off didn't seem to be worth the stress!

That being said, I stress to my nursing students the importance of mental health days.
Even if you don't have a full day to devote to rest and relaxation, you can at least take an afternoon to yourself.  One of my favourite forms of escapism is reading.  When I actually get a chance to read FICTION, it is glorious.

One of the other things I love to do in my free time is to take courses with The Khan Academy.  The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides free classes in various topics.  The classes are extensive, well-researched and fun!  I am currently taking a math course (not so fun) to prepare myself for a class I have to take in January.  The other course I am taking is in Cosmology and Astronomy.  Yes.  I am a huge space nerd and I dream of a day when I can study astrophysics full time.  Until that day, I will continue to sit on my balcony and look at the stars...  And take some fun courses with the Khan Academy!

Here is a quick video explaining their philosophy:

Censorship on Campus?

Full disclosure:  I have an extreme aversion to censorship.  I find the ability to control information and ideas inherently destructive especially when in the hands of people in power.

With that out of the way, there has been an interesting article circulating among the faculty where I teach.  Essentially, it describes how students are demanding faculty provide them with "trigger warnings" on content that "might cause a strong emotional response."

Do faculty have a right to refuse to censor content?  Isn't the purpose of higher education to challenge ideas?

I am especially biased to this concept because I have worked with patients with significant PTSD from horrors such as war crimes and residential schools.  I honestly don't know how I feel about this trend and I am curious to see if it *trigger warning* bleeds over into the college where I teach.

Current Trends in Nursing Education

The Flipped Classroom

When I was preparing to teach my first nursing theory course, the nursing department was buzzing with this new concept called "The Flipped Classroom."  I could overhear heated discussions about the implications of a flipped classroom in our break room.  The general consensus was that this trend in education could "revolutionize" the way undergraduate nursing students learn theoretical and clinical knowledge.  The fervor was close to cult-like.  I explored this concept the way I usually approach new ideas: With a heavy dose of skepticism. 

What is a Flipped Classroom?

For the visual learners out there, this YouTube video has an excellent summary of the philosophy behind the flipped classroom:

Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann (2013) describe a flipped classroom as a way for the educator to use their class time more effectively.  To the authors, lecturing to a class may not be the most efficient use of class time.  In a flipped classroom, the students come to your class having already listened to your lecture online and/or viewed your PowerPoint presentation.  That way, class time can be used to apply what they have learned from the online content. The educator becomes the facilitator of classroom activities and can (theoretically) give more attention to the unique learning needs of their students. This gives the instructor more opportunities to circulate around the classroom, giving individualized instruction to students and filling in any gaps in the students' understanding of concepts. The students are essentially doing what would have been their homework in class and their new homework becomes watching the lecture online.  

Freedom from lectures?

Technology and the Flipped Classroom

One way to create online content for students is by using a screencast program.

This program allows the user to record or "capture" their voice and any movement or activity they perform on their computer.  The instructor would record their lecture using this software and upload it to an integrated learning platform like Desire2Learn or a file hosting service like Dropbox.  The student could then listen to the lecture at a time that is convenient for them and come to class prepared for the associated participatory learning activities.  

Nursing Education and the Flipped Classroom

As educators, we have a limited amount of time to cover each of the learning objectives for that class.  In my case, I had only two hours to teach extremely complex concepts like acute kidney injury and acid-base imbalances.  My go-to way of teaching was to create a PowerPoint presentation, dispense as much content as possible via the "sage on the stage" method and hope I had enough time for my participatory learning activities.  In my heart of hearts I knew I could be doing better.  I wanted to students to not only learn the concepts but understand the concepts as well.  I felt like the really rich learning would take place using patient case studies, classroom debates around ethical issues and demonstrations of complex psychomotor skills.  I sought the advice of one of my mentors and she suggested I try it out!  I will discuss my flipped classroom experience in the next blog post called New Insights in Nursing Education. 

Sams, A. & Bergman, J. (2013). Flip your students' learning. Educational Leadership, 70(6), 16-20.

New Insights in Nursing Education

The Flipped Classroom in Theory

After all the excitement around the flipped classroom approach, I was curious to see if this model has been applied to an undergraduate baccalaureate nursing program.  A quick lit review turned up an article written by Maura Schlairet, Rebecca Green and Melissa Benton (2014).  In this article, they champion the flipped classroom model stating that is will help students develop "...the characteristics necessary for successful lifelong learning." (2014, p. 324)  That sounded pretty great!  Who wouldn't want that for their students?  They also casually mention at the end of the article a few minor requirements for a successful flipped classroom (2014): 

     1) Institutional administrative support

     2) Academic freedom

     3) In-house dedicated IT specialists to create all of the PowerPoint presentations and
         voiceovers (because faculty need to focus on the content and concepts of course!)

In the budget-conscious environment where I work (and where most instructors work!) , these requirements are tantamount to a fairy tale.  So I did what any first-time instructor would do: I created my own flipped classroom.

The before picture

The Hard Sell 

When I transitioned from clinical teaching to teaching in a classroom, I was surprised to discover that I would have to create all of my own PowerPoint presentations and classroom activities.  For some strange reason, I had assumed that these resources materialized out of thin air.  It didn't occur to me that I would have to create them myself! The course I was teaching was brand new and I was starting from scratch.  From what I was hearing, this flipped classroom sounded pretty nifty so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to test this theory out.  Just to reiterate: I was a brand-new teacher with no recent classroom experience.  The last time I taught in front of a classroom was 11 years ago in the Peoples' Republic of China and my lessons consisted of modified versions of Jeopardy.  

For my first class I went easy on the students.  I performed my "sage on the stage" technique to thunderous applause (in my head) and mentioned that my next lecture will be posted on Desire2Learn.  One tentative hand went up.  "Does that mean we don't have to come to class next week?"  I wasn't expecting that question.  I explained with all the enthusiasm I could muster that next weeks content will be online so we can use the classroom time for activities like case studies.  This seemed reasonable to my student and I thought nothing more of it.

The Role of an Adult Educator

I had a week to prep my class and I had assumed this was plenty of time.  This is when I discovered I had no idea what I was doing.  I learned quickly that the role of an adult educator was expansive.  Not only did I need to be an expert in my field of instruction, I needed to disseminate a massive amount of content and somehow make it interesting. On top of that, I needed to master PowerPoint and figure out how to record my lecture so I could post it for the students in time.  This was no small feat.  By some miracle (and an obscene amount of coffee), I had my lecture recorded and uploaded to D2L just in time for the weekend.  This gave my students plenty of time to watch my lecture and come prepared for my activity-filled class on Monday.  Then I realized I didn't have any activities for my flipped class.  It was going to be a long weekend.

The Flipped Classroom in Practice    

By the time Monday rolled around, I was actually excited to try out this flipped classroom everyone was talking about!  I felt confident and prepared with all of the learning activities I had planned for that class.  I had a practice quiz typed up for my pre-test, I had written up complex case studies and I had even devised an ethical dilemma debate around some challenging issues.  When I arrived at the classroom, the 42 students that had attended the first lecture had dwindled down to seven.  I was heartbroken.  Apparently, I wasn't as clear as I thought I was when I explained how the application class was going to go.  The students felt like the online lecture was good enough so they didn't see the point of coming to class.  I neglected to explore one minor detail: What the students wanted.  The students, as it turns out absolutely hated group work and preferred to work on case studies independently as homework.  The appreciated the lecture format because it allowed them to ask questions as the lesson progressed and clarify any areas of confusion as they arose.  

      

My flipped classroom experiment was a failure in so many ways but I am grateful for the experience.  I have learned what I really need is a balance between classic lecture formats and participatory learning activities.  I may try a flipped classroom again but it will be after I gain some more teaching experience.  And if, as Schlairet and Green (2014) suggest, I have my own IT specialists to create all of my lectures for me! 

Schlairet, M. C., Green, R., & Benton, M. J. (2014). The flipped classroom: Strategies for an undergraduate nursing course. Nurse Educator, 39(6), 321-325. doi:10.1097/NNE.0000000000000096