“With Davis Advantage, students are coming to class prepared which increases engagement, discussion, and application of the material.”
Heidi Johnston, RN, MSN, DNP Associate Professor of Nursing Linfield University School of Nursing
Linfield University School of Nursing, in Portland, Oregon, offers a traditional Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program, as well as two second-degree programs—a 12-month Accelerated BSN program and a 15-month Master’s Entry into Professional Nursing program (MEPN). The traditional BSN program admits 86 students twice a year; the Accelerated BSN admits 56 students one time per year; and the MEPN, which was started in January 2023, can admit 24 students annually. While students in the BSN program are mostly traditional students right out of high school, the Accelerated BSN and MEPN attract non-traditional students who have worked in another career and range in age from their 20s to 50s. All prelicensure programs are on campus with clinical rotations in the Portland metropolitan area. As Associate Professor of Nursing, Heidi Johnston is Director of the Accelerated programs and teaches Fundamentals in all three programs. The Fundamentals course is the first course that students take as part of their nursing program. The challenge: Students were not coming to class prepared Heidi started at Linfield one and a half years ago. “When I joined the faculty, the students were already using the Davis textbook. But what I noticed was that students were not coming into class prepared,” says Heidi. “Our goal in the Fundamentals course is to make it an active learning classroom. And you can’t do that if students haven’t prepared prior to coming in.” She emphasizes that she wanted students to do more than just complete the lecture PowerPoint, she wanted students to be ready to apply their knowledge in the classroom setting. The solution: Davis Advantage for Fundamentals After reviewing the Davis Advantage materials, Heidi decided to adopt it for the Fundamentals course. She requires students to complete the online activities prior to coming to class. That includes the pre-quiz, which is their grade for the class that day. “Because the pre-quiz counts as a grade, the students really have to take their time and get into the textbook material to do well on the quiz,” she says. Heidi also assigns the Personalized Learning Activities which count as a participation grade. “Students don’t have to complete these, but participation in these activities is 10% of their total grade for the course. It’s a significant enough part of their grade that they really need to do them.” The students are required to complete the learning activities prior to class; they do not get points if they are completed after class. “We also start incorporating the Clinical Judgment Activities right away in the first semester. We know with the Next Gen NCELX® that we have to prepare our students to start thinking differently from the very beginning of the nursing program.” Heidi acknowledges that these activities are difficult for new students. “It’s hard to get first semester students to figure out nursing school, understand the material, and realize it’s not just memorizing but applying what they are learning. But the Clinical Judgment Activities really help with that, and the pre-quizzes incorporate all of the different question types that students will encounter on the NGN, so students can start practicing right from the start.”
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