Due to the ongoing nursing faculty shortage, many new faculty will be entering the workforce though few have formal training or experience in teaching and learning. A rigorous faculty development program focused on bridging teaching and learning gaps with an emphasis on online and authentic learning will be presented.
It is now, more than ever, becoming apparent that there will be an ever-increasing turnover of academic faculty due to the retirement of the “baby boomers.” In particular, certain areas of healthcare, such as nursing, will be experiencing grave shortages as the population ages; the average age of doctorally-prepared nursing faculty is 53.5 years, indicating a likely spike in retirements and subsequent roles to be filled (American Association Colleges of Nursing, 2015).
Nurses have been identified as a critical component in improving patient care and ensuring access to quality health care (Institute of Medicine, 2011), but as a result of an ongoing nursing shortage, there are projected to be over one million job openings for nurses by 2022 (AACN, 2014). Compounding this demand for nurses, close to 80,000 applicants were turned away from nursing programs in 2012 due to due to lack of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and other budget constraints (AACN, 2014). Approximately 20 percent of new nurse graduates leave their first job within their first year on the job (Kovner, Brewer, Fatehi, & Jun, 2014) while nurse managers report new nurses lack clinical judgment and do not know how to ‘think like a nurse’ (Tanner, 2006) or apply what they have learned to practice (Lasater, 2007).
Furthermore, there is a noted lack of knowledge and skill in the areas of teaching and learning amongst masters- and doctorally-prepared faculty (Robinson & Hope, 2013). The shortage of academically prepared nursing faculty, their relatively advanced age, and their own experience having been taught with mostly traditional didactic methods mean that many instructors teach using methods that do not resonate with adult learners or integrate clinical and didactic content (AACN, 2003; Cangelosi & Moss, 2010; D’Antonio et al., 2010; Hegge & Hallman, 2008; Hinshaw, 2001; Robert, Pomarico, & Nolan, 2011). The need to recruit new nursing instructors to fill vacancies often takes precedence over their educational preparation.
Combine this with the ever-increasing popularity of and movement towards trends such as blended and authentic learning (Johnson, Adams Becker, Cummins, Estrada, Freeman, & Hall, 2016), and you have the perfect storm of change that requires effective management:
A large “change of the guard” while needing to ensure that basic, effective teaching and learning of adult graduate-level learners is understood in the context of instructional trends, innovations, and expectations of future learners.
So how do we calm this storm? How do we manage this change and gap in knowledge and skills all at once?
In this case, we found that the “storm” needed to be managed via an intervention that could assist in lessening these burdens in a coordinated, integrated manner. And while we cannot “fix” the ongoing shortage of faculty, we found the need to be prepared to ensure that those who are newly hired into these roles are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in teaching and learning in the coming years, particularly as online and blended learning are on the rise. With this in mind, we determined that the most appropriate intervention to meet these needs was a new faculty development training program.
In this session, we will discuss the new faculty development training program we developed that is focused on bridging the knowledge and skills gap in teaching and learning by providing lessons on instructional design and delivery within the landscape of the learning environment that is continually focused on virtual, asynchronous, deep learning. The program’s inception, design, development, and implementation will be examined along with the steps taken to assess new faculty’s learning needs and implement a comprehensive evaluation plan. Additionally, we will discuss the various tools and technologies we utilized to implement and assist with the deployment of deliverables in the various stages of the program.
Highlights of the session include:
- Discussion of Needs Assessment: The design and deployment of a mixed-methods needs assessment. What should be included and asked in order to ensure that you are appropriately determining what the learners’ needs are in relation to teaching and learning in blended and online environments that focus on deep, authentic learning. The design and deployment of the assessment using a survey tool, interviews, and a focus group.
- Examination of Program Design: How to take the data from the needs assessment as well as best practices from the literature to design a 2-day development training workshop focused on instructional design and delivery in online learning for graduate-level students that is focused on using authentic learning activities and assessments. Design tactics and decisions will be discussed, including face-to-face and blended components, content topics and structure, as well as learning objective development and alignment.
- Review of Evaluation Design and Implementation: Evaluation of programmatic outcomes will be discussed using the 4-level Kirkpatrick evaluation framework (Kirkpatrick, 1994). Included in this discussion will be information related to tying end of the semester course evaluations to professional development goals for new faculty. Three areas of focus — instructional delivery, instructional design, and instructional assessment — are targeted and data on these three areas is then used to measure impact and effectiveness in online, in-person, and blended courses within the school.
- Lessons Learned & Ideas for the Future: Lessons learned from the program development process will be shared, with an emphasis on what we plan to do in the future as we continue to refine and re-offer the program as new faculty join the school. Incorporating faculty voices into future offerings as members of a community of practice is discussed.
- Session Audience Participation: Interactivity will be included in the session with short electronic audience response polls using the PollEverywhere technology throughout. Participants will only need a cell phone with text capabilities and/or a smartphone, tablet, or computer with Internet access.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2003). White paper: Faculty shortages in baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs: Scope of the problem and strategies for expanding the supply. Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/publications/white-papers/faculty-shortages.
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). (2014). Nursing shortage. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). (2015). Nursing faculty shortage. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.aacn.nche.edu/media-relations/fact-sheets/nursing-faculty-shortage
Cangelosi, P. R., & Moss, M. M. (2010). Voices of faculty of second-degree baccalaureate nursing students. Journal of Nursing Education, 49, 137–142.
D’Antonio, P., Beal, M., Underwood, P., Ward, F., McKelvey, M., Guthrie, B., & Lindell, D. (2010). Great expectations: Points of congruencies and discrepancies between incoming accelerated second-degree nursing students and faculty. Journal of Nursing Education, 49(12), 713-717.
Hegge, M. J., & Hallman, P. A. (2008). Changing nursing culture to welcome second-degree students: herding and corralling sacred cows. The Journal of Nursing Education, 47(12), 552-556.
Hinshaw, A. (2001). "A Continuing Challenge: The Shortage of Educationally Prepared Nursing Faculty". Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. 6(1), 3.
Institute of Medicine (IOM). (2011). The future of nursing: Leading change, advancing health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
Johnson, L., Adam Becker , S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., & Hall, C. (2016), Horizon report: 2016 higher education edition. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium.
Kirkpatrick, D. L. (1994). Evaluating training programs: The four levels. San Francisco, CA: Bernett-Koehler.
Kovner, C. T., Brewer, C. S., Fatehi, F., & Jun, J. (2014). What does nurse turnover mean and what is the rate? Policy, Politics, & Nursing Practice, 15(3-4), 64-71.
Lasater, K. (2007). High-fidelity simulation and the development of clinical judgment: Students' experiences. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(6), 269-276.
Robert, T. E., Pomarico, C. A., & Nolan, M. (2011). Assessing faculty integration of adult learning needs in second-degree nursing education. Nursing Education Perspectives, 32(1), 14-17.
Robinson, T. E., & Hope, W. C. (2013). Teaching in higher education: Is there a need for training in pedagogy in graduate degree programs? Research in Higher Education Journal, 21, 1-11.
Tanner, C. A. (2006). Thinking like a nurse: A research-based model of clinical judgment in nursing. The Journal of Nursing Education,45(6), 204-211.