Skills Development
Assignment Overview: This week’s written assignment will focus on skills development.
Due: Upload your assignment in the form of a paper by Sunday night at 11:59 pm Mountain Time.
Assignment Details: For this assignment, you will create a course schedule that accommodates classroom and lab/simulation activities. You will make decisions that support the teaching and evaluation of fundamental nursing skills based on a sample course syllabus for NUR 300: Foundation of Nursing (see attached syllabus).
Skills Lab Case Study
Read the attached syllabus for NUR 300. Develop a plan to teach and evaluate subjects and fundamental
skills that are included in the course. The course has a total of 10 instructional weeks and a final exam/testing
week. Using the provided list of subjects, skills, and time slots, you will decide what you will cover during each
week. Account for all class time, lab instruction, supervised practice time, and return demonstrations/check
offs.
Assumptions:
You have a class of 60 students.
You have a nursing skills lab with 10 stations, each equipped with a bed and a lifelike, low fidelity manikin that can be used to practice most skills.
Each station is designed to duplicate a fully equipped hospital room.
There are also four high fidelity adult human simulators. Each high-fidelity simulator is set up in its own
room.
Assume that you have all the equipment and materials you would need.
Faculty led/supervised labs are held on Monday and Wednesday afternoons.
Fridays are open labs for practice.
On lab afternoons, you have 2 faculty who will provide instruction with two more available to help with
supervised practice or check offs when needed.
Requirements:
For your paper, complete the course schedule at the end of the syllabus. While labs will not always (and don’t
necessarily need to) correlate with lecture content each day, keep in mind how skill content builds on prior
knowledge and may require that students have some classroom theory first. Some lab content is sequential in
nature. For example, you can’t teach sterile dressing changes before learning to don sterile gloves. Consider
how you will use your lab time for instruction, practice, and/or return demonstration/check offs. Not every skill
must have a check off. You decide which will and won’t. Support your decisions with appropriate
documentation (minimum 2 scholarly resources plus your textbooks).
Part 1: Address the following questions (you are not limited to these but must address them at a minimum).
For each area, be sure to explain your rationale and support your decisions. Begin by completing the course
schedule. All blocks of time must be accounted for. Insert the completed schedule into your paper.
Class
Schedule subjects from the syllabus to be covered in each class session. You may need more than
one class period for some topics. You might consider covering some topics during lab time when there
is overlap.
Lab
Using the schedule at the end of the syllabus, decide when lab instruction, practice, and return
demonstrations/check offs will take place for each of your skills. Look at all the skills covered
throughout the course to be sure you are using the appropriate proportion of the time. Consider the
amount of time students will need between instruction and check offs to practice (i.e., don’t schedule
high stakes check offs the same day as instruction and practice). Not all skills must have formal check
offs but explain your decisions below.
Rationales and Documentation: In several paragraphs, explain your scheduling decisions supported with
documentation.
Explain your reasoning as to where and how you scheduled the classroom topics.
Explain your reasoning as to where you placed the skills and how much time you allotted.
Explain your general format for instruction and evaluation of the skills.
What percent of the overall lab time do you anticipate will involve the traditional skills lab and what
percent might use high fidelity simulators? It could be any ratio, just explain your reasoning (your
textbooks can help with this).
Part 2: Choose one of the skills and describe how you will conduct a check off for it. Explain your rationales.
Address every question below:
Will it involve low or high-fidelity manikins?
What is the student required to demonstrate?
How long will you give them to perform the skill?
How many times can they attempt the skill?
Can faculty provide any coaching during the check off? Why or why not?
What happens if a student does not pass on the first attempt?
Is the check off pass/fail or will there be a grade? If a grade, what is passing?
Are there critical components that will result in automatic failure if not done correctly?
These are all things that faculty have to consider when designing lab experiences. The purpose of this
exercise is to take you through the process of making these decisions. For every decision, explain WHY.
Part 3: Summary and Reflection: Write a concluding paragraph or two describing your experience of creating
the class and lab schedules. For example, did anything surprise you? What was the most challenging part of
the assignment?
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