Teaching fundamentals of nursing, I seldom get the “aha” moment. When I taught the second semester students, I would see the “aha” moment when students were in clinical and what they learned in lecture finally made sense. Instead of just memorizing information, the students were able to apply the information. One of the questions Laura Schmidt, the director of nursing program, keeps asking is, “We need to test using analysis type questions, but how are the nursing faculty teaching the students to think in those terms?” Since I started incorporating simulation into the fundamentals of nursing class, the nursing students are able to get the “aha” moment during the first semester of the nursing program. During the first semester, I have three simulation cases. The first is to perform a head to toe assessment on the patient, the second is the room of errors, and the third is to care for a diabetic patient.  The students problem solve as they work through the case study, and demonstrate higher levels of reasoning, such as application and analysis, instead of just “remembering”. My next step, was to figure out how to get the “aha” moment for the online students.

This semester I tried a new assignment for the online pharmacology students to get the “aha” moment and for them to think at a higher level. It wasn’t practical to have the student come to main campus and do simulation because it would not be an “online” class. After taking the Teaching Solutions Class this summer I decided to have the students do a scavenger hunt with medications. The students needed to learn the difference between a brand name drug and a generic drug, how the different routes of medication affected the drugs’ availability, and how many over-the-counter medications contained acetaminophen (Tylenol) or diphenhydramine (Benadryl). The students’ assignment was to go to a store that sold drugs (grocery store, pharmacy…) and compared the cost of generic and brand names of drugs. They then looked at the active ingredients, and the dosing. They compared adult drug doses to a pediatric dose. When the student actually discovered the information, they learned it better, and their test scores were higher than in previous semester. One of the students commented that she had been paying $10 more for prettier packaging because the brand name and generic ingredients were identical. The face-to-face were more engaged in class because they were able to discuss what they learned during their scavenger hunt.