Project Title:
Assessment and Evaluation Methods in Nursing Education: An Integration of Performance Based Instruction and Simulation Learning
Project Director and Other Associated Faculty and Staff:
Nicole Weydt, Nursing Faculty, Ridgewater College, Contact: nweydt@ridgewater.mnsuc.edu, Tel.: (320)234-0391
Project Design:
Nursing faculty at Ridgewater College have been in the process of analyzing the content of the nursing education curriculum and delivery of the curriculum in order to adopt Performance Based Instruction (which is instruction that is delivered and assessed against specific competencies) and simulation learning. This project invited national consultants to work with Ridgewater nursing faculty in developing assessment methods and evaluation tools and implementing of PBI and simulation learning.
Project Evaluation and Outcomes:
Ridgewater nursing faculty have begun implementing PBI and simulation learning into nursing courses with the goal of integrating these concepts into all courses. In Fall, 2004, Dr. Sue Roe and Debra Spunt were consulted regarding PBI and scenario teaching tools and their comments were considered at the monthly nursing discipline meetings. The outcome was the development of a scenario for semester-one nursing students along with benchmark tools that correlated with competencies in the curriculum. The scenario was implemented involving 12 students who were randomly selected and based on videotaping of the scenario exercise, the faculty made the following evaluation comments: (1) students demonstrated behaviors related to expected competencies but did not demonstrate mastery, (2) faculty acquired data that will permit making modifications and improve student performance, (3) consultant’s comments resulted in shortening the time frame for each scenario, (4) students assisted each other during scenario which demonstrated good peer support but made it difficult to assess competence of each group member. Faculty are now modifying each course in order to implement the PBI model that includes cutting edge assessment and evaluation tools. Initial anecdotal data collected from students who participated in the simulations was very positive.
Lessons Learned, Dissemination and Sustainability
In the future, the faculty plan to schedule the simulation events sooner in the semester in order to provide formative evaluation of the curriculum and student performance. The project has also produced secondary gains such as (1) the simulations, when done in conjunction with local hospital, are geared to decrease client wait times, (2) they are discussing using benchmark scenarios at the midpoint in nursing education to help identify “honor” students who have mastered the subject matter and thereby customize their clinical experience to make program more challenging for them, (3) Use of simulation learning has sparked interest throughout the community and in secondary schools. Dissemination has been implemented in several ways such as publication by project managers of an article describing the process and outcomes in the newsletter for International Association of Clinical Simulation Labs and one of the project managers made a presentation at the state Health Educators Conference in April 2005.
