Distance Tools and Techniques in Nursing Education
Enhancing student engagement and leadership: Building and Cultivating Successful Students and Teams
Presenter: Litsa Kostouros
Nursing education is ready to embrace the modern tools and techniques necessary to unleash the full potential of its students. Cultivating a successful network of colleagues through team-building is fully examined in this session, identifying first and foremost what successful teams accomplish as well as what pitfalls they attempt to avoid. This session addresses the limitations, constraints and role ambiguities in modern collaborative programs and devises strategies to address digital, cultural and organizational divide issues.
Research design:
This is part two of the Distance Tools and Techniques in Nursing Education project. In this study, research subjects (n=100), are graduate students at three Greater Toronto Area University Schools of Nursing and must have completed their final year in any of the Toronto Area University Schools of Nursing between 2007 and 2008 convocations. Participants completed a qualitative questionnaire and attended a test focus group in order to discuss their experiences developing formal and informal networks in their respective fields. The findings showed that students identified as having moderately used tools and techniques, significantly increased the orb of their networks and alliances within the profession.
This study is still in progress. Participants are engaged in utilizing current as well as upcoming tools in order to garner further data. Re-test results via questionnaires, software in beta, and further focus groups will be collected at 6 months and 1 year following the initial focus group.
Description of the presentation:
Introduction
Rationale for the study
Setting
Research sample
Learning Management System Applications
Learning management system applications, including but not limited to community-mediated conferencing, e-portfolio and webinars function as an alternative method to traditional forms of face-to-face experiences. However, do these tools enhance student engagement and leadership? Or, are they simply add-ons, offering less expensive alternatives to traditional methods of engaging in professional development? What products and services exist to facilitate such experiences?
Review of applications:
Test-retest results of the research sample and comparison with existing literature.
Methods & Data collection:
Pre & post attitude survey questionnaires
Pre & post focus groups
Performance measures (site visits, networking and alliance size, attrition and retention)
Data analysis
Correlations and factor analysis
Nursing education is ready to utilize tools and techniques which will stimulate student engagement and leadership. The timing could not be better as the health care industry offers limitless opportunities for Graduates to attain personal and professional satisfaction.
The conclusions:
Individual Capacity:
Traditional forms of professional development can be particularly expensive and relatively inaccessible for adult learners. This sample population is composed on non-traditional students, who balance work-life-school and are often limited by financial and time constraints from participating in extra-curricular activities.
The knowledge of as well as the proficiency in the usage of these tools and techniques can play a critical role in whether or not a student will utilize these resources. However, if they can, they will inevitably increase their individual capacity within their respective academic community. If these tools and techniques can be utilized as an alternative means then the barriers can be removed.
Community Capacity:
These tools will unleash the full potential of a cohort of students who have incredible wealth and stock. Once the data is set up within the applications engagement as well as leadership across this plane will inevitably break down the barriers as more and more students will become flagged and customized profiling can commence. Inevitably, training and proper support must be embraced and endorsed from top levels in order to be regarded as an equal. Otherwise, these applications are doomed to mediocrity.
For the past five years Litsa Kostouros has been an Academic Advisor to over 4000 students enrolled in the School of Nursing at Ryerson University. Currently she supports transitional as well as leadership projects for approximately 1500 students across three sites enrolled in the Centennial-George Brown-Ryerson Collaborative Baccalaureate (BScN) Degree.
Litsa is also a Graduate student in the Masters in Distance Education Program at Athabasca University.