Instructional Design Models

Nurse educators play a vital role in ensuring that the next generation of nurses is prepared to meet the growing demand for healthcare services. Nurse educators are also instrumental in shaping the future of the nursing profession, encouraging a focus on holistic patient care and illness prevention, as well as promoting community health.

In the 21^st century, the learning environment encompasses learning resources and technology, means of teaching, modes of learning, and connections to societal and global contexts. The learning environment also includes human behavioral and cultural dimensions, including the vital role of emotion in learning, and it requires us to examine and sometimes rethink the roles of teachers and students. The use and focus on information technology in education is expanding from the enhancement of learning spaces to include factors beyond hardware, software, and the network.

To adapt to the rapidly varying and advancing healthcare settings; nurse educators must regularly assess and review education curricula, teaching-learning strategies, technological changes, cultural diversity in the nursing environment, faculty development challenges, economic challenges and aligning education with the practice environment.

 CHALLENGES

Curriculum Challenges

Continuous curricular modifications are an essential phenomenon in nursing academia in order to level learning with the rapidly evolving professional practice. Faculty members gain insight on the students’ feedback on their clinical placements by the end of each semester through individual and group discussions using Interpretive Descriptive qualitative research methodology. Nursing programs aim to prepare nurses who are able to deliver safe and high-quality care and would be able to adapt to the evolving environments of practice. Nursing peda-gogues endeavor to expose the students to various learning experiences to make sure that they receive their information through multiple channels and would have access to the best available evidence. This strategy takes a lot of time and energy from the nurse educators, and might face multiple challenges (Landeen et al., 2016). Continuous curricular modifications are an essential phenomenon in nursing academia in order to level learning with the rapidly evolving professional practice.

Faculty members gain insight on the students’ feedback on their clinical placements by the end of each semester through individual and group discussions using Interpretive Descriptive qualitative research methodology. Nursing programs aim to prepare nurses who are able to deliver safe and high-quality care and would be able to adapt to the evolving environments of practice. Nursing peda-gogues endeavor to expose the students to various learning experiences to make sure that they receive their information through multiple channels and would have access to the best available evidence. This strategy takes a lot of time and energy from the nurse educators, and might face multiple challenges (Landeen et al., 2016).

 

Technological Challenges

Technology has a significant influence on our lives, on practice, education, management and research. In nursing education, outcome-oriented education is currently being highlighted rather than process-based learning, for instance through skill-based techniques; evidence-based techniques in education; providing students a rich learning journey unlike former models of formal lecturing; and incorporating evolved learning technologies in many programs. All these styles share one major challenge: how we merge the art and science of caring together with the easily accessible technology, so that caring persists to be converged on humans.

 Educational technology is the employment of evolved models of technology to ease the educational journey and for the former decade, this has incorporated using web-based education in both live classes and classes uploaded to the internet for later access by learners (Huston,2013). It also involves electronic references, such as e-books, a multitude of internet-hosted material, computer access and broadband internet services within class and IT rooms, smart-boards, video conferencing and so on. Educators have a double-edged role: to include the appropriate employment of technologies in education and train nurses to employ technology in clinical practice. Despite the changes taking place in the nursing milieu, nurses still serve at the center of the health care system. Therefore, nurses must be properly trained to care for the human spirit, cultures and societies, educated in both the scientific and technical aspects of care and who provide holistic caring.

Economic challenges

Tuition fees pose obstacles to prospective candidates where the economic depression in the US and regression in financial aid programs have changed the student’s study plans. In 2009, 15% of post-graduate nursing academic programs have recognized financial status and costs of the programs as barriers of enrolling in such programs (National M.A. Fawaz et al. International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences 9 (2018) 105–110106 League for Nursing, 2011). Moreover, program location can be a hindrance to nurses who are place bound by responsibilities to support family and provide income. Nursing programs are less available in rural areas despite the increased and crucial necessity of such programs in such areas, where nurses have to be satisfied with longer shifts for less pay (Fitzgerald, Kantrowitz-Gordon, Katz, & Hirsch, 2012). Further-more, nurses who are employed in hospitals find it difficult to continue their educational career and specialize in certain areas of nursing, as employers usually have to pay replacement fees to in order for them to attend their classes thus posing an added economic challenge.

Instructional Context, Design Models, Learning Objectives and Lesson Plans help overcome such challenges.

Nowadays, nursing education is facing various challenges locally and globally, as well as exhibiting multiple facets of reformation. From aligning nursing education with the practice settings to incorporating nursing as an integral part of the health workforce, to adequately preparing nursing educators and providing them with proper development opportunities, to dealing with technological, economical and ethnic challenges, nursing educators are entitled to recognize and deal with the obstacles that come with the 21st century, in order to maintain a high quality of nursing graduates, quality of care as well as safeguard patient safety and satisfaction.

 The utilization of the instructional context and design models, learning objectives and lesson plans can guide educators in a multitudinous approach to ensuring each child is able to connect the information to the core concepts of the topics. This leads to enriched learning and motivation. Nursing education is an ever-changing field and upon the transition from conventional classroom to web-based clinical instruction, educators have become required to guide, motivate and coach students to acquire a more advanced technological experience within their field of study. However, the deficit in nurse educators which is worsened by the present task overload, deficient reinforcement and difficult access to academics when educators are cross-performing as clinical practitioners as well makes such transition a difficult one.

 Thus, some solutions that can be summarized in working on maintaining a high quality of bachelor education for nurses, implementing articulation program establishing strong partnerships between educational facilities and clinical settings and implementing internship programs, simulation and inter-professional approaches in nursing education, can be proposed that are ultimately beneficial for scholars, educators and the profession of nursing education. These proposed improvements revolve around valuing nursing practitioners, which in turn results in modifications in culture and attitude.

 

References

Landeen, J., Carr, D., Culver, K., Martin, L., Matthew-Maich, N., Noesgaard, Ch., & Beney-

Gadsby, L. (2016). The impact of curricular changes on BSCN students' clinical

learning outcomes. Nurse Education in Practice, 21,51–58.

 Lewitt, M. S., Cross, B., Sheward, L., & Beirne, P. (2015). Interprofessional education to

support collaborative practice: An interdisciplinary approach. Society for Research into

Higher Education.

 Fukada, M. (2018). Nursing competency: definition, structure and development. Yonago

Acta Medica, 2018(61), 001–007.

 Hofler, L., & Thomas, K. (2016). Transition of new graduate nurses to the workforce:

challenges and solutions in the changing health care environment. North Carolina

Medical Journal, 77(2), 133–136. https://doi.org/10.18043/ncm.77.2.133.