A Model for Easily Incorporating Team-Based Learning into Nursing Education

A sense of urgency exists among nurse educators to determine the best possible teaching strategies to create a rich, engaging learning environment for students. With the calls for transformation, innovation, and excellence in nursing education from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, and the National League for Nursing, educators may determine that current teaching strategies fall short. Team-based learning, an innovative teaching strategy, offers educators a structured, student-centered learning environment and may be effective in teaching necessary skills to students. An overview of how this strategy fosters many of the essential concepts, such as critical thinking, professionalism, communication, and interprofessional teamwork, is presented. Additionally, this article offers a clearly delineated recipe for implementing team-based learning in the classroom. This innovative strategy has the potential to transform nursing education and provide a positive teaching and learning environment for both educators and student

Rural Characteristics Tool

This tool examines current knowledge and confidence in teaching rural characteristics

Telehealth Tool

This tool examines current knowledge regarding telehealth

Nuclear spin driven quantum relaxation in LiY_0.998Ho_0.002F_4

Staircase hysteresis loops of the magnetization of a LiY_0.998Ho_0.002F_4 single crystal are observed at subkelvin temperatures and low field sweep rates. This behavior results from quantum dynamics at avoided level crossings of the energy spectrum of single Ho^{3+} ions in the presence of hyperfine interactions. Enhanced quantum relaxation in constant transverse fields allows the study of the relative magnitude of tunnel splittings. At faster sweep rates, non-equilibrated spin-phonon and spin-spin transitions, mediated by weak dipolar interactions, lead to magnetization oscillations and additional steps.Comment: 5 pages, 5 eps figures, using RevTe

Navigating to new frontiers in behavioral neuroscience: traditional neuropsychological tests predict human performance on a rodent-inspired radial-arm maze

We constructed an 11-arm, walk-through, human radial-arm maze (HRAM) as a translational instrument to compare existing methodology in the areas of rodent and human learning and memory research. The HRAM, utilized here, serves as an intermediary test between the classic rat radial-arm maze (RAM) and standard human neuropsychological and cognitive tests. We show that the HRAM is a useful instrument to examine working memory ability, explore the relationships between rodent and human memory and cognition models, and evaluate factors that contribute to human navigational ability. One-hundred-and-fifty-seven participants were tested on the HRAM, and scores were compared to performance on a standard cognitive battery focused on episodic memory, working memory capacity, and visuospatial ability. We found that errors on the HRAM increased as working memory demand became elevated, similar to the pattern typically seen in rodents, and that for this task, performance appears similar to Miller's classic description of a processing-inclusive human working memory capacity of 7 ± 2 items. Regression analysis revealed that measures of working memory capacity and visuospatial ability accounted for a large proportion of variance in HRAM scores, while measures of episodic memory and general intelligence did not serve as significant predictors of HRAM performance. We present the HRAM as a novel instrument for measuring navigational behavior in humans, as is traditionally done in basic science studies evaluating rodent learning and memory, thus providing a useful tool to help connect and translate between human and rodent models of cognitive functioning

In Our Own “Campus-Yard”: A Creative Approach to Learning About Culture

Culture is an important and essential concept in nursing education necessary to provide safe, quality nursing care. As nurses are called to care for more diverse populations, nursing faculty members often struggle to find effective ways to teach nursing students about culture and cultural competence. Although there are a variety of teaching strategies used to teach culture, clinical experiences have yielded the most favorable results. Furthermore, immersion experiences have been shown to have a positive impact on cultural competence, but they require a time commitment and may not be financially feasible for many schools of nursing. A study by Lonneman explored 6 strategies, including journaling, reflection, and interviewing, to increase cultural competence in second-degree nursing students and found positive results. In an effort to create an interactive cultural opportunity for baccalaureate nursing students, the author created a unique clinical experience by “matching” nursing with international students located on the same college campus. The purpose of this article is to describe this creative, inexpensive approach to providing a cultural clinical experience for nursing students using resources on one’s very own campus

Nursing Student Perceptions of Digital Textbooks: A Pilot Study

Digital textbooks are increasing in popularity, often resulting from the perception that students demand the use of technology in academics. However, few studies have been done on student perceptions of digital textbooks. A pilot study was conducted with students enrolled in a nursing research course; 123 nursing students participated. This study found that students overwhelmingly preferred print textbooks over digital textbooks. More research needs to be done before assuming students would prefer digital textbooks over print