Introduction
Teaching large classes in nursing education can present unique challenges. Engaging students, maintaining their attention, and ensuring they grasp complex concepts requires the use of creative strategies that break up traditional lectures. By incorporating various teaching techniques, educators can enhance the learning experience, make the material more accessible, and create an inviting environment. One particularly effective strategy is the use of short clips to visually reinforce content. This article explores teaching strategies for large classrooms and details how short clips can be implemented in nursing education. Large Classroom In Nursing Education
What Are Teaching Strategies for Large Classrooms?
In large classroom settings, it’s essential to utilize strategies that make students feel comfortable and involved. Passive listening during long lectures can result in disengaged students, reduced comprehension, and missed opportunities for critical thinking. To combat this, interspersing lectures with engaging techniques such as short group discussions, quick quizzes, and multimedia presentations helps break the monotony and keeps students focused.
Some strategies include:
- Interactive Polling: Tools like clickers or online polling platforms allow instructors to ask real-time questions, encouraging every student to participate.
- Peer Discussions: Pairing students to discuss key concepts for a few minutes fosters engagement and helps them apply the material.
- Visual Aids: Infographics, diagrams, and videos can make complex nursing concepts more understandable and relatable.
- Short Clips: The use of short film clips is particularly effective, as it engages students visually and prompts discussion related to class material.
Use of Short Clips for Description in Nursing Education
General Description
Using short film clips during lectures is an excellent way to capture students’ attention, break up the flow of a long lecture, and emphasize key points. Today’s students are accustomed to consuming information via videos, making this strategy particularly effective for nursing education. Clips from movies, TV shows, or health-related documentaries can provide a realistic depiction of patient care scenarios, helping students visualize clinical situations.
Film clips can show both positive and negative portrayals of nursing and healthcare, making them powerful tools for illustrating patient responses, crisis management, and ethical dilemmas. They serve as a bridge between theoretical concepts and real-life application, prompting students to think critically about how they would respond in similar situations.
Preparation and Equipment
Instructors can choose from various methods to present short clips, such as using DVDs, VHS tapes, or digital video files. Modern classroom technology, including PowerPoint, allows educators to embed videos directly into their presentations, making it easier to play clips during lectures. Educators can also use DVD software that lets them bookmark specific scenes, or they can use online streaming platforms with pre-selected segments relevant to the course material.
It’s essential to prepare “thinking questions” or prompts before showing the clips, guiding students to focus on specific aspects of the film and relate it to the class objectives. This approach ensures that the clips are not merely entertainment but serve as a tool for deeper understanding of the subject matter.
Example of the Strategy in Action
One common application of this strategy is using short clips from popular movies to discuss healthcare topics and nursing roles. For example:
- “Pearl Harbor”: Used to discuss trauma care, crisis management, and military nursing.
- “Patch Adams”: Demonstrates the use of humor in patient care and group therapy in mental health settings.
- “A Beautiful Mind”: Illustrates the nursing process, from assessment to evaluation, particularly in mental health nursing.
- “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”: Highlights the stages of change in patient behavior, relevant to understanding mental health transformations.
- “Jake Q”: Focuses on access to healthcare and the complexities of medical jargon.
Before showing a clip, the instructor might provide students with questions like:
- “What are the nursing implications of this clip?”
- “How should a nurse respond to this situation?”
- “How does this clip relate to today’s class topic?”
These questions encourage students to actively think about what they’re watching and relate it to their nursing education.
Implementation of the Short Clip Strategy in Nursing Education
1. Engage Tired Learners
Whether dealing with students in a traditional academic setting or working nurses in continuing education, tired learners often benefit from multimedia tools like short clips. These clips provide a mental break while still reinforcing class material. The visual nature of videos allows learners to absorb content in a more relaxed way, while still focusing on important nursing concepts.
2. Use Clips to Reinforce Key Topics
Clips can be shown in every class or reserved for specific lessons that require additional reinforcement. For example, several clips from a single film can be used throughout a session, with discussions after each segment to connect the material. After showing each clip, the instructor should reinforce the points of discussion, ensuring that students understand the relevance of the video.
3. Combine with Clinical Decision-Making Exercises
Film clips can be combined with clinical decision-making or critical thinking exercises. For example, after showing a scene from A Beautiful Mind where the protagonist experiences a mental health crisis, students can be asked to consider how they would assess the situation, what interventions they would implement, and how they would evaluate the patient’s progress.
This integration helps students develop critical thinking skills while providing a comfortable and familiar method of communication, as video media is a format most students are accustomed to.
4. Depict Clinical Symptoms
Many clinical symptoms are difficult to demonstrate in a lecture setting. Short clips from movies can provide visual examples of these symptoms, making them more accessible to students. For example, Awakenings can demonstrate extrapyramidal, Parkinsonian symptoms, while Patch Adams shows catatonic behavior. These realistic depictions help students recognize symptoms they might otherwise struggle to visualize in the classroom.
5. Reinforce Thinking Questions
It’s important to reinforce thinking questions before, during, and after showing the clips to ensure students view the clips as part of the learning process. For example, after showing a scene, the instructor might ask, “What are the ethical implications in this scenario?” or “How does this situation relate to the nursing role in patient advocacy?”
Conclusion
Teaching large classes in nursing education requires innovative strategies to maintain student engagement, promote critical thinking, and ensure understanding of complex topics. The use of short clips is an effective way to break up long lectures and provide visual reinforcement of course material. By using multimedia tools, educators can create a dynamic and interactive classroom environment that caters to today’s learners.
When implemented thoughtfully, this strategy can significantly enhance the learning experience, providing students with real-world examples that bridge the gap between theory and practice. Combined with other strategies like clinical decision-making exercises and thinking questions, short clips can be a powerful teaching tool in nursing education.