Nursing Career-Ladder Access Through Innovation

The Hocking College School of Health and Nursing is seeking grant funding to facilitate a Course ReVisioning project to increase access for licensed practical nurses who wish to enter Hocking College to complete an Associate Degree in Nursing and become registered nurses. With the use of technology and creative curriculum development, the faculty would like to engage in Course ReVisioning for three courses in a curricular sequence within the LPN to RN bridge program in an effort to: a) increase student access with decreased demands for on-campus presence, b) increase student success, c) increase faculty competence and capacity for development and facilitation of on-line learning, and d) increase retention.  These face to face, technology-enhanced courses will be significantly revised to allow for a blended online model.

Learning goals identified by the group are specific to the online environment and include those innovative strategies that facilitate: a) meaningful interaction among students and between students and faculty to augment their learning (discussion boards, blogs, electronic communication); b) deeper, engaged learning; and   c) assessment of student outcomes (item-writing for tests and assignments with rubrics that evidence the mastery for online delivery, frequent low-stakes quizzing and practice testing with timely feedback).  Further, the community is interested in exploring a variety of online delivery methods to include the full capacity of the College’s current platform of WebCT and the use of iPods.  With Joni Tornwall’s assistance, open source applications (Sakai, Moodle) will be explored for their capacity to serve this project, yet given the novice nature of the learning community it seems wise to use a WebCT format for this first project in the department.  However, the College’s e-portfolio system (open source technology) will be used to submit selected assignments within the courses.

In addition to sharing internally with the community of learners within the department, the community will offer sessions to share their scholarship with others in the College during faculty development days; make research findings and innovations available on the Hocking College web site, and present at conferences through both educational innovation (e.g. OLN) and nursing professional bodies (OCADNEA).

Click here to download the Portrait of Practice (pdf).

OLN Southeast Regional Center at Shawnee State University in Partnership with the Teaching and Learning Center 940 Second St., Portsmouth, OH 45662 (740) 351-3334