Audience: Undergraduate nursing students at a technical college
The goal of this project was to make high-level recommendations to the administration of a technical college for redesigning their nursing program using Outcome Based Education (OBE) principles. The report expressed understanding of the administration’s goals and concerns, identified opportunities and challenges caused by the transition, and recommendations on how to implement the change to an OBE curriculum.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Original Program
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| High NCLEX-RN exam pass rates | Didactic instruction and passive learning are the primary methods of education. Assessments mostly focus on theory and memorization, instead of critical thinking and hands-on skills. |
| Experienced faculty (10-15 years or more) | Faculty may be hesitant to change. |
| Diverse student population that is available for in-person classes | Diverse populations have different learning styles, time constraints, and access to resources. |
| Clinical placements in various healthcare settings provide ample opportunities for students to gain real-world experience. | Clinical placements are not aligned with didactic content and learning outcomes. |
| LMS system is available for educational use. | LMS is underutilized, with limited integration with learning activities. |
Recommendations
- Flipped classroom approach: Students are assigned didactic content before class, which gives them control over the pace and timing of study, honoring their learning preferences and reducing cognitive load. Class time is spent in review, discussion, and active cooperative assessment methods such as simulations, case scenarios, or role playing.
- Competency checklists and standard of care algorithms: Using the LMS to post and track clinical competency checklists and creating standard-of-care algorithms and job aids to distill complex theoretical knowledge into concrete clinical action steps.
- Pilot testing: Chose one large lecture class and one clinical healthcare setting and pilot test OBE ideas and methods. Analyze the resulting data and learner and instructor feedback to fine tune the program and make improvements.