Interactive learning environment: engaging students using clickers.

Educators continue to search for effective methods that will engage students in their learning. This article presents the integration of clickers using the constructivist approach to foster critical thinking while engaging learners in a large classroom setting. A 22-item survey was used to measure the perceived value by students to the use of clickers in engaging them in the learning process and fostering critical thinking. Clickers, also known as personal response systems, created an interactive environment, moving students beyond simple recall to application, analysis, and construction of knowledge.

Think globally, learn locally: Multimedia conferencing between two schools of nursing.

Three nurse educators, who met at the American Nurses Association Nursing Care in Life, Death and Disaster Conference (Atlanta, June 2007), collaborated on a multimedia conferencing project to teach nursing students about disaster response. This case study examines two outcomes of this project. The project provided students in a disaster nursing course in Indiana an opportunity to meet faculty who helped establish and maintain a special needs shelter in Texas following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It also demonstrated, through the use of technology, the ability of nurse faculty to share their expertise with colleagues and students residing in different geographical locations.

Three technological enhancements in nursing education: informatics instruction, personal response systems, and human patient simulation.

With the healthcare system in a state of flux, nursing education faces many challenges. Nursing faculty must design a dynamic curriculum that deals with the explosion of information, the complexity of the healthcare system, and optimal patient outcomes while addressing the diverse expectations of learners. Inclusion of information management and interactive technology facilitates learner engagement promoting critical thinking and improving clinical judgment. This paper details the faculty's vision for an ubiquitous information technology curricula, highlighting an undergraduate informatics course, use of a personal response system, and integration of human patient simulations.

Embedding a pedagogical model in the design of an online course.

The importance of course design and its relationship to learning is overlooked when the electronic version of a course is static. The author discusses the process used to redesign a traditional course into a dynamic and interactive Web-based course by using a pedagogical model developed specifically for hypermedia. Congruence between the instructional methods and the media is a must for a successful design that meets the needs of a wide variety of learners. The hyperlearning model, Dimensions, provides the infrastructure to facilitate the congruence of methods and media while supporting multiple learning styles.