“F.A. Davis has bent over backwards to make the Advantage products work for our program. They are the most responsive publishers I’ve ever worked with!” Janiece Paulat, DNP, MSN, RN Associate Professor of Practice, Nursing Course Lead Faculty Concordia University, St. Paul
“The research shows that active learning is more beneficial than the passive method of lecture. Active learning makes students think. And with the clinical judgment model coming out now, students need to think about what they are reading and apply it.”
Dr. Janiece Paulat is a Course Lead Faculty in the pre-licensure program at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota (CSP). The program serves students in their 24-month traditional BSN program which features all in-person lectures, labs, clinicals and simulations, as well as students in their Accelerated BSN (ABSN) program, a 16-month hybrid program that combines online theory with in-person skills laboratories and clinical learning experiences, including high-fidelity simulations. The BSN program admits between 25-50 students annually, while the ABSN program admits as many as 300-400 students. Programs are taught at campuses near St. Paul, Minnesota and Portland, Oregon. The programs attract diverse students from all over the country: traditional high school graduates, students preparing for second or third careers, and LPNs who want to complete their RN degrees. The College delivers the same curriculum and uses the same materials for both their BSN and ABSN programs. The challenge: Enabling an active learning environment As the ABSN program at CSP does not use lectures of any kind during the course of the curriculum, it was important for them to find materials that had a variety of activities and resources. And while the traditional BSN program does include lectures, the school was seeking to create an active learning experience for both programs. “The research shows that active learning is more beneficial than the passive method of lecture,” says Dr. Paulat. “Active learning makes students think. And with the clinical judgment model coming out now, students need to think about what they are reading and apply it.” The solution: F.A. Davis Advantage for core courses CSP started a new curriculum in January 2021. They chose F.A. Davis Advantage products because they enabled an active learning environment that offered multiple modalities. “These resources have been very beneficial to the students because there are multiple types of activities, so students are not doing the same thing every time.” She cites Davis Advantage’s pre-tests, videos, interactive activities, and post-tests as a valuable way for students to assess how much they know about a topic, focus their studies on the areas where they didn’t perform well, and then test themselves again to see what they have learned. Dr. Paulat also creates quizzes as part of their assignments, and she says it really helps the students understand if they are on the right track. She praises the Clinical Judgment Activities. “These Clinical Judgment Activities are set up like the Next Gen NCLEX. We use these because it helps the students practice clinical judgment which is necessary for them to pass the new exam.” Dr. Paulat also notes that they are going to be adding more of Davis Advantage’s Personal Learning Activities to provide more opportunities for students to develop their clinical judgment.
The result: Positive feedback from students and faculty
Dr. Paulat says that consistent feedback from the students about Davis Advantage has been very positive. “They tell me that the activities really help them learn the material. They enjoy using them and find that the videos and interactive assignments provide another way of learning that is better than just using a book alone.” The students have even responded favorably to the quizzes. “In evaluations, the students are saying how valuable this is for helping them identify areas where they need to focus.” The faculty have also seen other benefits from the Advantage products. According to Dr. Paulat, they love the Clinical Judgment Activities and will be including a lot more in the coming terms. “We had case studies that we’d been using previously, and they weren’t working very well. So, we substituted some of the Clinical Judgment Activities for the case studies and they are working much better.” In addition, faculty have found that the F.A. Davis content is more up to date than some of the products they are using for NCELX review. And Dr. Paulat notes that the books themselves are well-organized, “short, sweet, and to the point.” CSP uses Blackboard. A side benefit of the Advantage products is that they integrate well. Students can access the e-books and all the online resources from their Blackboard login. The integration allows for automatic grading which saves a lot of time for faculty and provides students with immediate access to their grades in Blackboard. In addition, the faculty don’t have to worry about managing class IDs across different sections anymore and that has been a huge benefit for them. The F.A. Davis experience: Dr. Paulat praises F.A. Davis for their responsiveness and perseverance in helping CSP integrate the Advantage content into Blackboard. “Honestly, at the time we adopted the products, the F.A. Davis Advantage material wasn’t quite ready for the new Blackboard/Advantage LTI 1.3 integration platform. But the team bent over backwards to make it work. Every issue I’ve had, they have responded to immediately and figured out how to solve it.” She also notes that F.A. Davis has provided her with valuable statistics about her course that she couldn’t access on her own. “That was really helpful because these stats are allowing us to identify how to help struggling students.” In addition, Dr. Paulat says that F.A. Davis has provided orientations for students both via Zoom and in-person. “The team has been amazing. They are friendly, helpful, and have gone above and beyond to make sure the products are working for us. I never expected such a strong support system from a publisher.”
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