Future Direction in Contemporary Learning and Education Essay

This paper is an evaluation of the implementation of inquiry-based learning (IBL) as an educational innovation at University of Surrey and University of Sheffield and its influence on educational outcomes. It also evaluates the influence that the innovation can have on a newly created course, and a course to be created in the future. These help in the evaluation of the influence of the innovation in nursing education.

Part A: Modern Educational Innovations

The need for the improvement of education outcome has been stressed within this decade, with countries striving to ensure rise in competitiveness, economic growth, and social justice among other issues. The improvement of outcome in nursing education has proved vital, with educators striving to ensure they produce practitioners with the ability to adhere to the standards of practice and deliver quality services to patients. Educational innovations have proved significant in the improvement of the educational outcome in various fields. Educational innovations are the processes, products, approaches, and strategies that have significant improvements upon researchable scale and status quo. Examples of these innovations are MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), adaptive learning technologies, simulation/gaming strategies, flipped classroom setting, and inquiry-based learning. This paper discusses the use of IBL as an educational innovation that is currently implemented by a number of educational institutions.

1 Examples of Institutions that currently use IBL

Examples of institutions that have implemented IBL in various faculties include the University of Sheffield and The University of Surrey. At the University of Sheffield, IBL is being used in the faculties of humanities, engineering, dentistry and Health, Medicine, Science, Social Science, and International Faculty (Sheffield.ac.uk, 2016). The reason for the use of this educational innovation at the University of Sheffield was to increase the link between research and teaching. The initiative in the institution include the use of inspirational teachers who are major researchers within the subject, incorporating informed and current research topics in the curriculum, provision of opportunity of practicing and gaining research skills, and using inquiry and research to learn.

The University of Surrey has also incorporated IBL in various faculties to meet the objectives of their Project of Learning to Learn (McDonnell, 2015). The institution uses IBL to ensure the students have the ability of undertaking practical research work and gaining the abiliy to link theory to practical issues in various subjects. The role of IBL in the institution is to improve the education outcome in various fields.

2 The benefits of IBL to the Institutions

The benefits of the program stated by the two institutions have a significant form of similarity. These include giving students the ability to create their own significant questions; giving the students the ability to answer question using obtained supporting evidence; ability to explain any evidence that is gathered; ability to connect any explanations to the knowledge that is gathered from the process of investigation; and creation of a justification and an argument for the explanation given. All the benefits shape the level of knowledge and give the students the ability of connecting theory with practical activities in an industry.

3 How IBL May alter the Faculty’s Role

IBL has been able to change the role of the faulty by increasing the emphasis that is placed on the inquiry nature of education, not just though questioning and thinking but at higher and deeper levels of questioning like critical thinking as well as analysis, and a reflection of the knowledge grasped. Processes of clinical reasoning, including moral reasoning, are highly incorporated into the faculty. Moreover, the implementation of IBL lead to the formulation and implementation of teaching strategies of a wide variety, that have the ability of incorporating individual styles of learning. As such, the students get the chance of approaching the learning process in a variety of ways that depend on their experience and age. The use of IBL also gives the students the chance of collaborating with professionals, peers, and educators as well as community organizations in the course of learning. Because of these alterations in the learning styles, IBL has the ability of changing the role of the faculty to case-related learning, problem-based learning, project-based learning, portfolio assessment, interdisciplinary learning, clinical reasoning, critical thinking, evidence-based practice and process-inclusive curricula among others.

4 Preparations by a nurse educator for Incorporation of IBL into academic setting

Gilbert (2014) elaborates that there are basically three stages that can be used by an educator in the preparation to incorporate IBL in an academic setting: the establishment is the objectives of a lesson through planning inquiry and posing questions; finding out through collection and analysis of evidence; and making a decision regarding what has been found out through conclusion, reflection and response to enquiry.

Before the use of these three steps, the nursing educator must understand what is expected to take place within the inquiry based classroom. As explained by Murray (2016), the teacher should give the students the opportunity of going through the lecture notes a day to the lesson so that they have the chance of discovering various issues and formulating important questions. The teacher should equally not take part in directly answering the questions from the students, but should rather show the students how to come up with the answers to their questions. Moreover, he should listen to the students and collect issues of major concern, encourage them to as relevant questions, encourage the use of projects more than lecturing, often publish and share relevant information, and include reflections in all the lessons.

After understanding the nature of an inquiry-based classroom, the nurse educator must start by setting the objectives that have to be achieved at the end of every lesson (Cleverly, 2003). This is done through planning inquiry and gives the educator the chance of understanding the content to deliver to the students and the relevant questions whose answers need to be explored in the classrooms. After the formulation of these learning objectives, the educator collects and analyzes necessary evidence that would help in meeting the objectives. Depending on the topic of the lesson, the evidence can be information from textbooks, academic journals, experiments, and related sources of academic information. The last step should be making a decision after the content is passed to the students. This stage involves the determination of the level in which the course content is understood by the students, and recommendations for further study.It involves the response to enquiry, a conclusion of the lesson and a reflection of the content covered.

Part B: Creation of a Framework for Nursing Course

1 Title of the Course
The course that is evaluated in this section is “Community Health Promotion”.
2 Course competencies
The role of this course is to make nursing students happy and motivated towards the provision of population-based health promotion. The students of the course are supposed to synthesize the knowledge using principles of community health epidemiology and practice, with a focus on primary prevention. They are thus meant to gain knowledge related to the delivery of population based care for families as well as communities. They are also meant to gain knowledge regarding the structure of the federal government’s healthcare system. Finally, the students get the knowledge related to the delivery of nursing care to vulnerable and aggregat…
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