Design Thinking in Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges for Decolonized Learning

This article builds upon current research to understand the value and limitations of teaching and learning design thinking (DT) in higher education. We implemented a mixed-methods study with faculty and students across 23 diverse courses in four higher education institutions in the United States. Findings showed that following structured learning processes, engaging in active listening, and focusing on others’ perspectives were the most valued DT practices across disciplines. In contrast, prototyping and experimentation were the least used DT practices, with widely varying understandings across disciplines. Additionally, we found consistent evidence that DT can support liberatory teaching and learning practices that decolonize students’ perceptions of power, encourage situated and action-oriented empathy, and provide opportunities for co-creation. This is particularly true when faculty intentionally encourage collaboration and project framing focused on critically analyzing dominant ways of knowing and power structures. Our analysis further revealed the challenges and importance of prototyping and conducting experiments with project partners. Ultimately, this approach can significantly enhance liberatory project outcomes and facilitate decolonized learning experiences. Given our findings, we point out limitations and challenges across current DT pedagogical practices and provide recommendations for integrating DT practices across disciplines in ways that center on issues of systemic oppression, social identity, and human-environmental relationships

From Private to Public: Using Authentic Audiences to Support Undergraduate Students’ Learning and Engagement

The purpose of this article is to explore the use of authentic audiences in higher education to support undergraduate learning. To explore the results of integrating authentic audiences in higher education, we present a collective case study in which the use of authentic audiences was employed in separate undergraduate courses at two different higher education institutions in the Eastern and Midwestern United States (N = 75). In one case, Wikipedia was employed as an authentic audience and in the other case, experienced secondary educators as well as Twitter were embedded. The goal of implementing authentic audiences in both settings and courses was to increase student engagement and foster critical thinking. Results suggest that integrating authentic audiences through these means can enhance undergraduate students’ engagement and learning and may serve to capture, but not necessarily foster, students’ critical thinking. Concurrently, an instructor’s pedagogy must also align with tenets associated with authentic audiences, including a commitment to a co-construction of knowledge and the purposeful selection of authentic audiences who are engaged, willing to partner, and have the necessary expertise and resources to contribute to students’ learning

Quantitative and Qualitative Research Report Critique by Nursing Students: Why and How to Conduct it?

Background: Critiquing research is one of the core skills that nursing students must learn for several professional reasons. This is particularly important because it helps them to: apply evidence-based interventions that enhance patient care, reduce variation in nursing care, perform quality assurance principles, further their knowledge about the most efficient and cost-effective intervention, contribute to research by identifying gaps in the literature, further patient advocacy by ensuring the research was ethically conducted, protect human rights and enhance their critical thinking and analytical skills. Aim:  The aim of publishing this report is to provide a tool of reference for incoming nursing students when attempting their own research critiques for the first time. Method: The main literature sources used to guide our critique analysis included multiple resources provided by our course professor and Fain’s (2017) textbook titled: "Reading, Understanding and Applying Nursing Research". Conclusion:  Through the process of critiquing research reports, we developed our critical thinking skills on how best to use and interpret future studies in our other projects and in our nursing roles, as well as enhancing our explicit and tacit knowledge surrounding the validation of research before implementing it into practice. This ability to constructively critique research proves to be an asset to both novice and more seasoned nurses and to continue to support positive outcomes for those who come into contact with the healthcare system. &nbsp

Monster Ecologies: Material Eco-Rhapsody and the Bio-Gothic in Animal’s People

This article analyzes how Indra Sinha’s novel Animal’s People incorporates bio-gothic aesthetics to address the unprecedented ontological, perceptual, and political challenges presented by the Bhopal Chemical Disaster. Bio-gothic aesthetics refer to biological substrates in order to represent a “trans-corporeal” body (Alaimo), one enmeshed with a damaged environment, where disruptions to the ecosystem return to disturb the so-called normal behavior of the body. Sinha’s novel represents a tropic character from gothic fiction, the monster, to perform an embodied critique of neoliberal globalization. The bio-gothic monster portrays the body as a site of universal (but unequal) precarity and risk, a surface of intervention for disciplinary power, and a node in a multi-species network of irruptive, improvisational resistance. By analyzing moments of material ecorhapsody, in which drugs or other psycho-active chemicals enable Sinha’s narrator Animal to tap into an extrasensory beyond and channel a damaged-yet-resilient environment, I describe how the bio-gothic monster offers new ontological, phenomenological, and political formations capable of resisting neoliberal global amnesia. The bio-gothic monster serves as a site where the seemingly-immaterial flows of global capitalism become-enfleshed, and, therefore, as a key node around which new, feral assemblages can be formed in the pursuit of postcolonial environmental justice

Whose Knowledge is it Anyway? Epistemic Injustice and the Supervisor/Supervisee Relationship

Higher education often acts as a bridge to society, preparing people for future social, political, and economic roles. For many academics, social justice and social inclusion are areas of research interest and teaching expertise. As such, institutions of higher education are well placed to foster reflection on social justice, through research and teaching, and thereby impact the wider society as students take up their roles within it. Yet, higher education itself should be subject to critique from a social justice point of view. Our aim in this article is to provide one such critique. We will focus on PhD research supervision, and in particular the supervisor/supervisee relationship. We will argue that the hierarchical nature of supervision can give rise to injustice. We will use the concepts of epistemic injustice and epistemic power as explanatory tools to clarify what is at issue within dysfunctional supervisor/supervisee relationships. Throughout, we will make use of the mythological story, "The Salmon of Knowledge," to unpack the hierarchies involved in knowledge acquisition/creation. Finally, we will conclude by noting the space within the scholarship of teaching and learning wherein critique of the structures within higher education from a social justice point of view occur, and where there exist potential gaps in this scholarship

Evaluating a First-Year Veterans Affairs Nurse Practitioner Residency Program: Analysis for Change

Background: The Veteran Affairs Portland Healthcare System (VAPORHCS) is experiencing a shortage of primary care physicians. To help meet this demand for primary care providers in outpatient clinics, VAPORHCS turned to nurse practitioners (NPs). A primary care nurse practitioner residency (PC-NPR) program was developed to support novice NP’s transition to practice. Purpose: To describe the development of evaluation tools and an evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of the PC-NPR program’s curriculum in supporting NP residents’ progression through the program and transition to practice utilizing accreditation standards. Methods: The development of evaluation tools using a combined approach guided by Meleis’ Transition Theory and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Program Evaluation Framework. Evaluation tools included a 12-item curriculum questionnaire developed from national accreditation pre-publication standards and a focus group interview. Results: There was a 54% (n=13) response rate. The questionnaire had some negative responses to three statements. The remaining responses were positive. The two main themes of the focus group were transition to practice support and curricular improvement. Conclusion: This evaluation contributed to a comprehensive program evaluation. Results are being used to make timely improvements to the program objectives and curriculum in preparation for seeking the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education national accreditation

Making assessment a team sport: a qualitative study of facilitated group feedback in internal medicine residency

Purpose: Competency-based medical education relies on feedback from workplace-based assessment (WBA) to direct learning. Unfortunately, WBAs often lack rich narrative feedback and show bias towards Medical Expert aspects of care. Building on research examining interactive assessment approaches, the Queen’s University Internal Medicine residency program introduced a facilitated, team-based assessment initiative (“Feedback Fridays”) in July 2017, aimed at improving holistic assessment of resident performance on the inpatient medicine teaching units. In this study, we aim to explore how Feedback Fridays contributed to formative assessment of Internal Medicine residents within our current model of competency-based training. Method: A total of 53 residents participated in facilitated, biweekly group assessment sessions during the 2017 and 2018 academic year. Each session was a 30-minute facilitated assessment discussion done with one inpatient team, which included medical students, residents, and their supervising attending. Feedback from the discussion was collected, summarized, and documented in narrative form in electronic WBA forms by the program’s assessment officer for the residents. For research purposes, verbatim transcripts of feedback sessions were analyzed thematically. Results: The researchers identified four major themes for feedback: communication, intra- and inter-personal awareness, leadership and teamwork, and learning opportunities. Although feedback related to a broad range of activities, it showed strong emphasis on competencies within the intrinsic CanMEDS roles. Additionally, a clear formative focus in the feedback was another important finding. Conclusions: The introduction of facilitated team-based assessment in the Queen’s Internal Medicine program filled an important gap in WBA by providing learners with detailed feedback across all CanMEDS roles and by providing constructive recommendations for identified areas for improvement

Re-Considering Market Development Approaches to Support Nunavut Inuit Priorities in the Seal Market

Seal hunting is a long-standing cultural practice for Inuit, who have also long participated in the commercial seal market. Inuit were negatively impacted by anti-sealing campaigns that resulted in international trade bans and subsequent market collapses for seal products. To improve market access for Inuit seal products, the Canadian government established the Certification and Market Access Program for Seals (CMAPS) to support export of Inuit seal products in European Union markets. In 2015, the Government of Nunavut became an Attestation Body under the EU Indigenous Communities Exemption, which enables the Government to certify Nunavut seal products for export into EU markets. To date, market development efforts have largely focused on supporting the export market for Nunavut sealskins, while less attention has focused on how such efforts impact the local value chain and meet the needs of Nunavut Inuit involved in the seal market. Focus group discussions with Inuit value chain actors in Iqaluit and Qikiqtarjuaq provide insight into the Nunavut seal value chain and explore perspectives of how government policies and programmes are meeting the needs of Nunavut Inuit. Findings revealed multiple gaps in the local value chain that have gone largely unaddressed due to a priority on export markets over the local value chain. These gaps limit export development opportunities and the ability for the seal market to adequately meet the needs of Nunavut Inuit and Nunavummiut alike. Collectively, this study demonstrates the importance of centralizing Inuit in economic development policies to support local economies and ensure Inuit priorities are met

Navigating the Tension between Being a Transformational Leader and an Efficient Leader?

Since its introduction in 2014, the quadruple aim of optimizing healthcare performance by reducing costs and improving population health, patient experience, and healthcare team well-being has not been realized. Lean, a formal quality improvement model aimed at eliminating waste, improving flow and quality of care, and increasing efficiency, has been inconsistently successful in healthcare due to poor implementation and organizational understanding. This discussion paper explores the potential for transformational leaders to support the use of lean through empowering clinical leaders. Transformational leadership is a relational style of leadership found to motivate followers by soliciting their perspectives on problem-solving while supporting each individual to reach their full potential. Although transformational leaders can foster the development of clinical leaders to influence and coordinate care, they must navigate the tension between supporting clinical leaders and the organizational demands for improved efficiency. The gains of supporting the use of lean by clinical leaders could be meaningful development of strategies aimed at the quadruple aim by supporting the daily efforts of front-line nurses and their leaders to improve the delivery of quality care