Necessity Sparks Acceleration of Educational Innovation School leveraged technology, experiential learning methods to bolster academic offerings despite pandemic disruptions For years, a core component of the University of Rochester School of Nursing’s Accelerated Bachelor’s Program for Non-Nurses (ABPNN) involved sending students out into the greater Rochester area to get their first community health experience. Assigned to work with the school’s many community partners, they fanned out across the city where they often encountered patients challenged by the social determinants of health, such as racism, poverty, literacy, and transportation. The community health component of NUR 377, the advanced medical-surgical nursing course, was both among the most challenging and most impactful experiences in a student’s 12-month undergraduate journey. But in the spring of 2020, the school’s academic leadership team knew that big changes were necessary for the course. And they had to happen fast. As COVID-19 began to surge throughout the country, shutdowns began to take effect, travel was restricted, and faceto-face interactions were discouraged. If COVID disruptions meant students were unable to go out into the Rochester community, they would miss out on a meaningful portion of their education. Rochester would have to come to them. In a matter of weeks, faculty and members of the school’s Educational Innovation Team (EdIT) did just that. With students starting the summer semester from their homes – some as far away as California – EdIT transformed the course, developing synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (on-demand) content that allowed students to replicate the in-person experience of past semesters. From thousands of miles away, UR Nursing students could explore Rochester neighborhoods using interactive maps and windshield surveys (iPad videos taken while driving city streets that catalog the shops and services available to residents in a particular area). They accessed the lived experiences of residents by interviewing CEOs and program directors on video calls. And they sharpened their skills by simulating telehealth visits through remote interactions with standardized patients. Flipping the community health component on its head was a massive undertaking, but much of the groundwork for the transition had been laid before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19. Over the past few years, the School of Nursing had already made strategic investments in its education tech-
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nology infrastructure and had begun to implement changes to curricula and the methods in which students were educated. The stewards of the school’s educational mission placed a greater emphasis on student engagement, leveraging technology, and the further integration of clinical and classroom experiences. “We had already been preparing the workforce for a changing environment, and the pandemic served as an accelerant to that,” said Lydia Rotondo, DNP, RN, CNS, FNAP, associate dean for education and student affairs. “That’s the silver lining of COVID-19. It accelerated and pushed us to more fully implement our innovations.” That was particularly true of NUR 377, where the biggest changes were implemented in a matter of two to three weeks. “We really needed to creatively identify alternate learning experiences,” Rotondo said. “We leveraged everything we had to make this work, and the efforts – large and small – of our faculty were remarkable.” “We had to pivot so quickly we couldn’t do everything we wanted to do all at once. But we were able to bring the Rochester community to wherever our students were and then further refine that experience for the fall semester,” added Tara Serwetnyk, MS, RN, NPD-BC, a teaching associate and the education innovation coordinator for the school. “We took something that was already good and made it better.” “What really stands out to me is that we ate, slept, and breathed this for about two weeks,” said Kaitlyn Burke, MNE, RN, CCRN-CNE-cl, instructor of clinical nursing and member of EdIT. “Everything really came together nicely considering what little time we had to put it together, but it has continued to evolve and expand.” The makeover of NUR 377 was just one example of how the school – hastened by the pandemic – has re-imagined its academic environment due to the expanding literature on best practices for student learning and course design, as well as evolving educational requirements for nurses to effectively practice in complex and collaborative environments. While the school’s academic programs were never put on hold, students shifted out of the in-person classroom setting back in March. Instruction was delivered remotely for classroom courses, but most labs and clinical training continued in person, though in smaller sizes. Helen Wood Hall saw its
