November 20, 2015
Create a spring syllabus that students might actually read with interest!
Phil Newman, grad-entry student and learning tech artisan, presented a virtual workshop on Piktochart, a user-friendly, web-based infographics-creation program that will allow you to turn your syllabus (or any text-heavy document) into a visually engaging piece of information that will focus the reader’s attention on key points. Continue reading
Pearls of wisdom from the STTI 43rd Biennial Convention
I’m wrapping up my series of blog posts on the pearls of wisdom I plucked from the STTI 43rd Biennial Convention with this summary of Lois Marshall’s presentation titled,
“Research Abstracts, Proposals, and Grant Writing: Basics from Start to Finish”
Lois is a nurse education consultant and writer extraordinaire who explained that the most important element of a successful proposal for anything is a great idea. Clarify your goals for your project, no matter what it is, and communicate how your project will make a difference to your stakeholders.
Take a careful look at what has already been done and written about your idea and get really comfortable with how you can build or improve on that. Create a strong case for the reasons you should be funded/chosen/published.
Read and follow–to the letter–the guidelines and requirements! One would think this would go without saying, but many proposals are rejected because simple directions were not followed. Keep your proposal sections within the word limits.
Lois covered the common components of a proposal, which are basically a formula for writing your idea in a conventional format. She provided very useful tips for each component; for example, she described how to write a good title for your project and provided examples of good titles and problematic titles.
Lois recommended applying for small grants, especially if you don’t have a history of being awarded for large grants or if you are changing your career trajectory. She pointed out that STTI has several small grant opportunities and encouraged anyone who meets the eligibility requirements and has an idea to advance the practice of nursing to apply.
Lois kindly gave her permission for me to share her PowerPoint presentation with OSU College of Nursing faculty members. If you are interested in knowing more, contact me, or attend the Flash Friday session I will offer in the spring semester on this topic.
Pearls of wisdom from the STTI 43rd Biennial Convention
My series of posts on the recent STTI Biennial continues with a summary of Nikole Hicks’ presentation titled,
“Are Your Multiple-Choice Tests “FIT”? Using the Fairness of Items Tool (FIT as a Component of the Test Development Process”
In short, Nikole did an exhaustive review of the literature to learn about best practices in test item writing with a focus on nursing education. She distilled the guidelines into 38 criteria to determine whether a single multiple choice test question is fair and unbiased. She rigorously tested her FIT tool with nursing faculty and found it to be valid and reliable. Read the full description of her study background, methodology, results and conclusions on the STTI conference web site.
Her list of 38 criteria can be used to evaluate a single multiple-choice test question, or they can be used to guide test question writing. They are divided into four categories:
The criteria include recommendations regarding how many distracters to include, words and phrases to avoid, and page formatting, among many other things. She recommends that nurse educators use the FIT tool to write original questions and revise publisher test bank questions to improve student success and better prepare students for licensure exams.
I found Nikole’s presentation to be very interesting, and the tool has the potential to be very useful in ensuring fairness of multiple choice exams. Many thanks to Nikole for doing the work of combing through the extensive body of literature to condense item-writing best practices into a practical set of guidelines we can really use. I have permission from Nikole to share the tool with OSU College of Nursing faculty, and I plan to offer a Flash Friday session on the tool in the spring semester.
Pearls of wisdom from the STTI 43rd Biennial Convention
What comes to mind when you hear the words “Bloom’s Taxonomy”? You probably think of the typical pyramid illustrating the stages of learning in the cognitive domain. The most basic level of learning, according to Bloom, is Remembering. As learning deepens and broadens, the student works toward the highest level: Creating. What you may not realize or remember is that there are two other learning domains with their own progressive stages.
In the nursing discipline, we sometimes refer to “knowledge, skills, and attitudes,” or KSAs, which align fairly closely with Bloom’s three domains of learning: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. (See Donald Clark’s website for more information and a plain-English explanation.) In nursing education, we tend to focus heavily on the cognitive and psychomotor domains of learning because that is (or seems to us to be) the nature of our discipline. I was reminded in a session at the STTI 43rd Biennial conference that we need to give the affective domain the attention it deserves and students need.
| KSAs | Bloom’s Domains |
Realm |
| Knowledge | Cognitive | Intellectual What do you know? |
| Skills | Psychomotor | Physical What can you do? |
| Attitudes | Affective | Emotional How do you feel? |
Why does the affective domain matter to nursing? Because when we use phrases like “quality and safety” or “cultural competence,” we are really referring to values that change behavior and affect nursing decisions on a daily basis. That leads to more questions for the educator: how do we assess students in the affective domain? For example, how do we know when a nurse is exhibiting behavior that provides evidence that they have achieved the level of cultural competence expected of them in the workplace?
When we write objectives for any learning domain, we look for measurable, observable signs to show stakeholders the objectives have been met. These signs will be products or performances we (as educators) and our stakeholders (administrators, accreditors, students and classmates) can perceive with one or more of our five senses to confirm that a learner has achieved a certain specific benchmark.
For example, if the instructional objective is for the learner to administer IM medication safely, it is fairly easy for us to identify the cognitive component of that objective (mental knowledge of medication and technique) and the psychomotor component of the objective (physical demonstration of procedure), but what is the affective part of the objective? It’s an attitude of quality and safety.
What metric do we use to measure that attitude? That is the piece that makes the affective domain so difficult. It’s one thing to know the standards by which quality is measured and the procedures necessary to ensure patient safety related to an IM injection; it’s quite another to internalize that knowledge so that it transforms a nurse’s attitude toward medication administration and the whole patient.
Verbs such as appreciate and value express the affective domain, but they are not technically measurable. However, it is possible to describe a learner’s behavior when they appreciate cultural differences and value patient safety. They may demonstrate sensitivity to diversity through respectful communication or prioritize elements of nursing care according to changing patient status and safety principles.
Writing objectives in the affective domain is a difficult concept to grasp fully. See Donald Clark’s page on the affective domain to get a solid start on making sure you have measurable objectives in all three domains for your class.
Clark, D.R. (2015). Bloom’s taxonomy: The affective domain. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/Bloom/affective_domain.html
Clark, D.R. (2015). Learning: Knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/learning/ska.html
Pearls of wisdom from the STTI 43rd Biennial Convention
Promoting nursing research and funding new nursing researchers through grants is an important mission for STTI. Are you interested in studying how your instructional innovations are impacting your students? Consider these grants from this prominent honor society in nursing:
STTI offers many other grant opportunities. If you would like to explore them, review their grants web page for details. Application deadlines occur throughout the year, and requirements vary. I would be happy to explore the funding opportunities with you to find out which one is a good fit for the project you have in mind.
David Merriman presented a virtual workshop on Friday, November 6, in which participants learned a few tips and tricks in Qualtrics, Ohio State’s new survey system. David has become a Qualtrics pro while working with this versatile and easy-to-use survey tool. He’ll share a few of the truly useful things faculty and staff often ask about, like how to create a scored quiz, email responses to survey creators and survey respondents, insert a customized banner for a survey, and prepare a survey to meet IRB requirements. View a recording of his presentation if you missed it the first time around.
Are you preparing a survey for data collection that needs IRB approval? Here are a few things to remember:
1. You may want your survey to be anonymized, which means all identifying information including the respondents IP address will be removed from the survey. View some simple directions for anonymzing your survey.
2. The IRB may ask you to be sure that your respondents can skip any question they don’t feel comfortable asking (which means any question in your survey). Therefore, you cannot force them to respond before submitting their survey, but to prevent them from skipping a question by accident, you can ask them if they are sure they meant to skip that question by “requesting a response.” Find out how to do that in the Qualtrics documentation.
3. The IRB will want to know what kind of survey system you are using to collect data to confirm that your survey responses are secure and your survey respondents are protected. The College of Nursing has boilerplate language, or a template, to help you describe Qualtrics on your IRB application, and you can find that in the college’s Sharepoint repository.
Do you have questions about Qualtrics and how to use it? Please contact David or any one of the CON-IT team members at CON-IT@osu.edu. We look forward to working with you!