Evaluation is Key to Preparing New Nurses

Patrick Luna:

To flip our script a little bit, especially when it comes to our evaluation and how we’re doing that. And like I said, it’s not so much our methods, it’s just how can we evaluate with being a little bit more innovative, and using a tool like GoReact is a really, really good method to do that just because of the ability to provide formative feedback and also use it in some summative settings as well. So one thing that I do is I use something called the Comfort Communication app. Y’all told me this when we were talking about it a little bit earlier. It’s become very popular and it’s been around since about 2020. It was a government-funded project to help bedside practitioners with communication. So it’s an app that you can download from any app store. It’s even has a web-based interface as well. So there’s a built-out nursing assignment. There’s two of them. So I use one of them in one of my courses and the other in another course.

So using that information, I could take the assignment information, put it on my Canvas LMS, and then the evaluation aspect of it, I put into GoReact. So I upload the rubric and instead of this being a written assignment or something that the students would do in a simulation space, I have them record their responses as if they were talking to a patient. So what they’re able to do is look at the resource, which is an evidence-based resource to provide them communication strategies, and then basically role play into a camera as to how they would interact with this patient or what strategies they would utilize. So I have them choose one, and then they have a script for what they would say to that patient.

So what I can do in this aspect rather than a written assignment is I can look at them. I can look at them speak, I can look at their non-verbals, I can give them feedback on all of those things in addition to their content. So it brings a level of richness to the assignment that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. And of course there’s the benefit of being able to see them, but what makes it even better within GoReact is the ability to provide them feedback using this very unique mechanism that I’ve talked about many times before. It’s because I can give them pinpointed feedback, they can go to the areas where I want to reinforce good behavior or good technique, or where they need improvement. So they can click on it, so it’s time-based and timestamped