Problem-Base Learning for Nurse Educators: Four-week Workshop & Seminar Series requires a minimum enrolment of 10 participants. It runs over four consecutive weeks and is routinely offered in August. Alternate times can be negotiated during the calendar year. This year the prescheduled workshop & seminar series runs from July 28th-Aug 22nd 2003.

– The delivery of the content has been developed to facilitate learning for individuals from a variety of linguistic backgrounds.

– Numbers permitting, this PBL workshop & seminar series can be tailored for Spanish speaking participants.

What strategies do tutors use to assist students with developing their individual clinical learning plans (CLP)?

General Strategies related to construction of the CLP:

– At the outset students need to have a foundational understanding of how to develop learning plans. The course or programme should provide them with a systematic approach to doing this. In our BScN programme we incorporate acquiring knowledge & skill in developing learning plans as a learning activity, in the first nursing course offered to junior students. These students develop CLP’s & receive ongoing feedback in order to consolidate the concepts related to this process. We also provide students with guidelines for CLP formatting & development in their Programme Handbook, which is their contract with the programme. This information becomes a valuable resource for future use when developing one’s CLP becomes a more autonomous process.

Strategies specific to the clinical placement:

– Tutors might take some individual time to interview each incoming student. The interview gives the tutor an opportunity to emphasize the focus of the course & to review the student’s final evaluation from the prior clinical placement. This creates an overt continuity with the last placement. Enables students to validate what they know & can do well. Helps in setting goals for building on strengths & addressing areas to improve. Students tend to use “catch phrases” when identifying their strengths & limitations. They should be encouraged to describe what they mean in relation to each item you discuss. Through questioning, encourage them to explore how this current clinical placement might help them meet their learning needs. It is useful to have the student articulate what strategies would help them reach their goals. This discussion gives the tutor an idea about the student’s ability to be self-directed and an opportunity to begin to formulate an approach to fostering the student’s learning. This dialogue should be supportive, provide guidance & promote reflective thinking. Hopefully the student will feel some autonomy regarding their learning and also become aware that this new venture into learning is a collaborative effort with the tutor as the quality control guide for meeting course expectations.

– It is important to promote critical thinking about what students need to learn fairly early on in the placement. Often tutors provide some seminal readings related to the client population or have students do a search for one or two relevant articles. After engaging in this activity they return to post conference to discuss a brief summary of the article & identifying some learning issues related to the readings. Through using the group context all students in the placement contribute to the baseline information & benefit from the collective readings. This is a great way to expose students to the literature & move them away from using texts as the major resource for clinical practice. Another approach in keeping with PBL might be to provide some scenarios that are taken directly from the clinical setting or to take the group into meet a client. After the scenario reading or clinical visit ask the students to think about what they need to know in order to effectively; safely & competently, care for the client. Include assessments, medications & procedures specific to the placement. This provides students with some baseline understanding of the placement & client population.

– Review the clinical course objectives. Focus on the verbs used to describe the expected level of learning. Students often need examples of what is meant by each course objective. This can be accomplished during a post conference session where all students can work together to problem solve in order to come up with relevant examples. Here the tutor can challenge the group’s thinking & reinforce examples of objectives & evidences that are congruent with course objectives. Generally students tend to gravitate toward objectives involving acquisition of knowledge or demonstration of psychomotor skills. Higher-order objectives involve providing evidences that demonstrate application of knowledge & integration of relevant data & knowledge (critical thinking) in order to engage in clinical decision-making. These evidences tend to require more complex thinking about the context & client population, the use of discretion and clinical judgment. Students entering a new clinical setting find these difficult to articulate since they have limited knowledge & exposure to the population.

– Applying knowledge gained from other prior or concurrent courses & workshops will assist the student with developing higher order objectives. For example our intermediate students take a critical appraisal course in which they learn to evaluate research studies. This new skill could be reinforced in the clinical setting through a learning objective that examines the effectiveness & efficacy of some nursing practice. This will promote meeting course objectives related to evidence based practice. Another possibility for meeting higher order objectives might be to critique & utilize concepts learned in a nursing theory course. This enables the student to build on prior knowledge by applying what they know to a specific clinical population/client & critiquing the usefulness of the concept in relation to understanding the client &/or with providing nursing care.

– Theoretical content: explored using small group seminars and workshops.
– Experiential learning activities are offered.
– Individual consultations are arranged with affiliates and faculty experts in clinical practice, research and education as well as with our community partners. Participants who wish to take advantage of this opportunity should indicate their interest upon application to the programme.
– Clinical site visits will be organized upon request. Participants who wish to take advantage of this opportunity should indicate their interest upon application to the programme.

During the four weeks on site at McMaster University the Programme Chair and McMaster faculty will assist the participants with adapting and integrating the PBL content during the interactive workshops and seminars. Optional debriefing sessions will be set aside for additional dialogue, enabling participants to further discuss issues specific to their courses or curricula.

Programme participants will take home educational materials related to PBL, compiled in two separate binders. One binder is specific to the current workshop and seminar series and contains a schedule of learning activities, overheads and resource material. The second binder offers an overview of the BScN curriculum at McMaster, with examples of specific learning activities, evaluation methods and a sample paper problem.

Our academic terms run for twelve weeks. Our fall term begins in September and usually ends the first week in December. The winter term is also twelve weeks, beginning the first week of January through to the first week of April. We frequently provide students with course offerings in the third term which runs from May to the end of July however the majority of these courses are offered to senior students who tend to require less tutor guidance and may therefore be less attractive to educators seeking experience in refining facilitation skills.

Educators interested in this type of learning experience should contact the Programme Chair, Michele Drummond-Young, to establish a timeframe for the sabbatical visit and discuss his/her educational objectives. Additional learning opportunities will be explored and a tentative timetable will be developed. Notification of your intention to engage in this educational experience should be made four months prior to the anticipated start date. Assistance with accommodations will be provided on an individual basis.

Key Benefits

– Individualized learning experience
– Development/refining of facilitation skills
– Individual, in depth support and ongoing supervision by experienced faculty
– Opportunities for additional consultations, auditing large & small group sessions & clinical site visits.

PBL was developed originally as an alternative approach to the education of physicians and first implemented at McMaster School of Medicine in 1969. In the mid 1970’s the School of Nursing adopted this methodology in a hybrid curriculum where all the nursing courses were taught using PBL. The present curriculum consists of 60 percent nursing courses using student-centered, self-directed, PBL in small group tutorials. The remaining 40 percent of the BScN Programme consists of health sciences and elective courses that use a combination of approaches.

Since 1992, McMaster University School of Nursing has been internationally recognized as a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Nursing Development. It has as its two areas of expertise, primary care nursing and teaching methodologies- of which PBL is the primary educational approach. With a reputation of excellence in curriculum development, faculty has expertise in all aspects of PBL and has formalized educational research through the Nurse Education Research Unit (NERU).

The impetus to formalize The Institute for Nurse Educators (Institute) arose out of ever increasing requests for a more structured, comprehensive approach to meet the learning needs of visiting professors interested in continuing education in Problem-based Learning (PBL). Although at the time, a number of very short, one week, courses were available, they did not address the challenges specific to adapting PBL to nursing curricula. Consequently the major focus of the Institute is a four-week workshop and seminar series, called “Travel & Learn: Problem-based Learning for Nurse Educators”, available every August. The content of this four-week series encompasses the underlying tenets of PBL in nurse education, resource development, evaluation and the transition from traditional teaching to student-centered, self-directed, PBL in the small-groups. The secondary focus of the Institute is self-directed educational sabbaticals offered to educators who have a basic knowledge of PBL and would like to further develop their understanding of how it is implemented and skills of group facilitation. Participants in either the four-week or sabbatical programme have opportunities to discuss educational research and clinical issues with McMaster faculty and associates through consultations and clinical site visits. The continuing education component of this series is complemented by a number of delightful cultural activities that provide a forum for participants and McMaster faculty to get to know each other a little better. Institute staff will also be pleased to assist visitors with arranging excursions to points of interest throughout Canada and the USA.