This presentation focuses on lessons learned over two years of developing multiple adaptive nursing programs involving dozens of new courses, along with tips for success. Focus areas include realistic timelines for writing original content, faculty buy-in, insight into student/faculty satisfaction, adaptive assessment data and achieving accreditation for an adaptive program.
Background: Due to an increasing demand by hospitals across the country for nurses to advance their education, more practicing nurses are returning to school now than ever before. Nursing programs must be positioned to meet this demand. Nurses are savvy consumers, and with hundreds of online programs to choose from, nurses look for an online program that is designed to recognize and reward their prior learning in the nursing profession. Nurses also need a program that can accommodate an unpredictable nursing schedule while meeting the rigorous requirements of a nursing accrediting body. Colorado Technology University (CTU) is meeting the needs of the healthcare industry by leveraging adaptive courseware to build scalable baccalaureate through doctoral programs that provide the working nurse an efficient and practical pathway to degree completion. Adaptive courseware allows the nursing student to experience a personalized learning pathway by moving past mastered content from prior learning and concentrating on currently identified learning needs. Although adaptive courseware is an appropriate instruction and assessment tool in the delivery of many subject areas and academic levels, it is tailor-made for working professionals.
Presentation/Session
This presentation will focus on lessons learned over two years developing multiple adaptive nursing programs involving dozens of new courses, along with important tips for success. Focus areas will include redefining subject matter experts, establishing realistic timelines for writing original content, crafting good questions at appropriate levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, obtaining faculty buy-in, insight into student and faculty satisfaction, adaptive assessment data and achieving programmatic accreditation for an adaptive program. Lastly, lessons learned will be discussed to assist the participant in determining the level of effort that may be needed by a department to develop or design an adaptive program involving 10-20 courses, including: instructional design resources, faculty, and instructional tools.
This interactive session will include a live demonstration of a fully mapped adaptive nursing program as well as a large replica of the maps displayed in the room. Assessment data will be shared along with the student and faculty perspective of an adaptive nursing program.
Learning Outcomes:
The participant will learn to:
- Compare and contrast the challenges of designing traditional online degree programs versus adaptive online degree programs.
- Verbalize the value of using adaptive courseware for working professionals and those already working in the program specific discipline.
- Interpret challenges and successes from designing adaptive programs, and the applicability back to their University.
- Anticipate possible questions from programmatic accreditors about adaptive courseware.