Week 1: Nurse Educator Competencies and Role Change
Actors use their talent to play many roles over the course of their careers. Similarly, nurse educators apply their talents to many roles, but can often do so over the course of a single day.
Nurse educators facilitate learning, learner development, and socialization. They apply assessment and evaluation strategies. They participate in curriculum design and evaluation of program outcomes. They engage in academic activities and function within the educational environment. These and other roles are manifested in academic nurse educator competencies.
But above all nurse educators are nurses, with expertise and experience to be shared with their learners. This sharing is often facilitated by a nursing practicum, an experience that enables learners to apply nursing concepts and skills to real-life situations and events in preparation of taking center stage. Like every other element of nursing education, practicums should seek to meet specific objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-oriented . . . or “SMART.” Nurse educators know well the value of writing SMART objectives, as developing objectives in this manner can help them guide learners toward success.
This week, you develop an experience plan for a practicum experience. You also develop SMART objectives that can be used to measure success of that practicum experience.
Learning Objectives
Students will:
- Develop measurable individualized practicum objectives*
- Evaluate practicum learning objectives
- Develop a Practicum Experience Plan*
- Construct a time log to facilitate practicum time management*
