Leveraging the Technology du Jour for Overt and Covert Faculty Development.

Leveraging Educational Technology for Evidence-Based Practice (LET-EBP), a four year federally funded project, was designed to extend use of educational technologies in the prelicensure undergraduate nursing program of a large public research university. Faculty members supported through the project developed and integrated over 20 technology-based modules into the nursing curriculum. Post-hoc program evaluation was guided by the RE-AIM framework. Faculty members reported learning general aspects of instructional design and best teaching practices through the process of integrating new educational technology; 81% of the undergraduate nursing faculty participated in some aspect of the program.Assisting clinical professionals to develop as effective teachers during an era of rapid change in educational technology is challenging. Many nursing faculty are novice teachers without benefit of formal teaching preparation; even experienced teachers may find integrating educational technology to be daunting. Healthcare clinical educators are expected to maintain specialty and healthcare technology expertise while learning how to integrate educational technologies (i.e., learning management systems, content authoring software, student response devices, and highfidelity human patient simulation) into teaching practice. However, unless teachers employ educational technologies effectively, learners are not likely to derive much benefit from their use (U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, 1995).National efforts to graduate more nurses, intended to alleviate current and predicted nursing shortages, have intensified the shortage of qualified nursing faculty (American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2012). Challenges in obtaining sufficient clinical learning sites for the growing number of nursing students are offset in some programs by the use of human patient simulation experiences to replace or enhance less effective or unavailable clinical experiences. Implementing the effective use of such a complex learning technology is an enormous undertaking.Developing faculty expertise in use of a variety of educational technologies is essential to the transformation of nursing education as recommended by the Carnegie Foundation (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard & Day, 2009). In a context of challenge and opportunity, a group of faculty and staff leaders from a nursing college within a very large urban multi-campus research university committed to a goal: overtly change the undergraduate nursing faculty culture from one of relative technology avoidance to active technology adoption, while covertly enhancing faculty members' general teaching and instructional design skills.In 2008, the college was home to approximately 140 full or part-time faculty, 500 undergraduate students, and 300 graduate students. A college-based team was determined to work patiently toward the goal of active technology adoption with only the currently available resources, but it was clear that additional resources might significantly speed up the progress and increase the impact of the project. Three "funding novices" set out to secure federal support; the second version of the proposal was funded as a DHHS/HRSA/BHPr/Division of Nursing four year project, "Leveraging Educational Technology for Evidence-Based Practice (LET-EBP)."LET-EBP team members embraced the challenge of changing the technology culture through work with four groups of participants: undergraduate nursing students, clinical nurse preceptors, multidisciplinary practice partners, and nursing faculty. Over the 4 years of the project, more than 1400 undergraduate pre-licensure students benefited directly from the expanded learning opportunities. Other participant groups included clinical nurse preceptors (160) guiding student clinical experiences in healthcare agencies, and multidisciplinary partners with collaborative health education and patient safety initiatives. …