Keep the momentum going!
“Be prepared to work extra hours, especially during your first two years,” gently warns Pam Gardner, MSN, RN, Kaplan Nursing School Consultant. “You’ll be grading papers, writing and grading exams, attending and administrating clinicals,” clicks off Patterson. Both experts remind new faculty that what looks on paper like a 20-hour per week teaching commitment can realistically expand to a 50-hour or more commitment per week during busy times.
“We teach our new faculty and students about block scheduling to help them manage time more efficiently,” says Patterson. There are 168 hours in a week, and each hour is “blocked out” on the chart faculty create. They then should block out the time for those tasks which they cannot control, like lecture, lab and clinical hours, and then plug in those tasks over which they do have some time control. Patterson encourages instructors also to include time for themselves for refreshment of body and spirit. “By blocking you can start to see what your schedule will really look like. Avoid work avalanches! You don’t want to grade papers at 4 a.m.,” she cautions.
“A professor before my time is remembered for saying, ‘You only have to be one hour ahead of your students,’” says Nelson adding that the timing is a little too close for her to live by, but the idea of staying ahead is critical. “You absolutely need to develop a habit and routine for prep,” she says. She offers the following two rules:
The Friday Rule: Prep one week in advance. “When I leave on Friday, I want my next week outlined and ready to go,” she says. “I have a solid framework, but may have a few things to flesh out.”
The 5 pm Rule: Prep 24 hours in advance. “When I leave work at the end of the day, I am completely ready for the next 24 hours,” she says. “I am ready to walk into the next day’s classes.”
Staying organized helps you work best with your students. “You need to be fair to your students,” Patterson emphasizes. “Meet the deadlines you give to your students. Make sure you hand things back on time, because if you don’t, you negatively impact a student’s ability to meet other deadlines.”
Nelson has a 24-hour grading policy for exams. Papers, of course, may take several days or longer, but she makes getting feedback to students a priority. This is a habit she picked up from her father, also a university professor.
To keep to task it’s important to minimize distractions and have effective communication during work hours. “I don’t leave email open when I’m working in the office,” says Nelson adding that the “new message” pop up can be distracting and that she only goes to email when she has actual email correspondence to attend to. “I check email periodically; check voice mail once daily; and avoid personal social media access at work,” she says. She also recommends closing the door as needed. This can be hard for some people to do, but sometimes it’s absolutely necessary.
If you have office hours, make sure the hours are at times and locations that work for you and the students. At most schools students congregate around the nursing department because that’s where everything is happening, but at some schools the nursing department may be in a building that’s inconvenient, especially at school where students are living on campus. “Sometimes you need to meet the students where they are,” says Nelson. “I know instructors who have held office hours at the student union because it was a better location for the students and a better use of the instructor’s time, because office hours were well attended,” she says.
You also need to know your limits. “It’s ok to say, ‘no,’” says Nelson, “but if you find that you need to say ‘no’ a lot, make sure you find advocates for your time.” Nelson’s transition to teaching full-time was unique in that she began as a part-time instructor in 2002 and moved into full-time teaching in 2007. “For the first three years of teaching full-time I was also working on my PhD, so time management was critical. I knew that as a new faculty person saying ‘no’ too many times may not be a great career move on campus, but I had the support of my department. The Chair would say ‘no’ on my behalf, and it made all the difference,” she says.
Technologically Speaking
The debate about PowerPoint usage in the classroom rages on. “I hate PowerPoint,” Nelson admits, “but I also recognize that it can be used very appropriately and effectively, and I do use it in classes.” A deeper discussion reveals that the issue, perhaps, isn’t with PowerPoint itself, but with how some people create slides. “There’s nothing worse than an instructor putting the lecture verbatim on slides,” she says. Patterson agrees, “Less is definitely more.” Both explain that you want to make sure students are focused on what you’re saying and that the slides should be supplements for emphasis.
“Students say they want the whole lecture on the slides and that they want the handout of the presentation, but then when it comes to evaluations they comment that they didn’t need to go the lecture, because the instructor gave them everything to take home with them. PowerPoint presentations should move beyond what you’re doing in class and should complement the lecture,” says Nelson. “I have an impactful picture of a naso-gastric tube perforating someone’s stomach,” confesses Patterson. “It makes the lesson on proper insertion much more powerful,” she says with a hint of laughter.
A final reminder from Patterson is to pay attention to the use of color, font, and background when creating power point slides. “Sometimes people get too creative and end up designing slides that are too visually confusing,” she says while admitting to falling into this category when she first began incorporating PowerPoint. “Creating slides takes time, so use your time wisely,” she recommends.
Student use of technology outside the classroom is changing, and Nelson shared a transition she made in class that is worth mentioning here. While she prefers other means of communication for her personal relationships (“I have 15 Facebook friends, and when a friend of mine became a nursing student here [at Truman] I had to drop her until she was done with nursing school,” she explains), she has seen that common technological tools like email and Blackboard are no longer as effective for routine conversation and communication as they once were. “Students use Blackboard for class if required, but they no longer use it for emailing or routine conversation, and they don’t check email the way they used to because they now use Facebook; Facebook posts are often immediately relayed on their smartphones, whereas email requires them to actually manually pull it up and check,” she says.
“I use Facebook groups for all my classes,” she says. “Usage is not mandatory,” she continues, “and I set the group up so I am the administrator and can monitor all posts and can take down anything that is not appropriate. The page is a great announcement center and a great place for Q&A. Before I started using Facebook a student would email me a question, and I would email back the response. Inevitably a short time later, another student would email a similar question, and I would have to cut and paste a response.
“Now when I check the page at night I see that a student may have posted a question during the day, and three other students responded. The students are having a discussion about the topic. I can then enter the discussion, add additional information and correct as needed, but the whole group is engaged. The response on class evaluations has been incredibly positive,” she affirms. It is good to know whether or not your college/university has a social media use policy in place to guide how/when you utilize this form of communication.
Contributors
Pamela Gardner, MSN, RN, graduated from Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts with a BSN and began her career in the Neonatal ICU at Johns Hopkins. She and her husband then moved to Missouri where she worked in Iowa as director of a community OB department. She received her MSN (maternal/child and education) from the University of Missouri in 2000. She taught at Missouri’s only public liberal arts and sciences institution, Truman State University, from 2000 – 2011. In 2008 she received the school’s Educator of the Year Award and the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Higher Education. She joined Kaplan full time in 2010 as a Nursing School Consultant.
Teak E. Nelson, PhD, RN, NP-C, graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia with a BSN; received her MS in Community Health Nursing from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and her PhD from the University of Missouri, Columbia. She is currently an Associate Professor of Nursing at Truman State University where her teaching emphasis is pharmacology, nutrition, and pediatric nursing; her research emphasis areas are breastfeeding and weaning decision-making, simulation, and service learning. She has worked in OB, Pediatrics, Med-Surg, Women’s Health and Primary Care.
Carol Patterson, MSN, RN, CNE, graduated with an AAS/RN from Middlesex County College, Jersey City, NJ, and later received her BSN from Jersey City State College. She began her teaching career at the Charles E Gregory School of Nursing at the Raritan Bay Medical Center, Perth Amboy, NJ. She received her MSN from Seton Hall University in 1985, and her Post-Graduate Certificate in Education from Rutgers University in 2003. She has been an associate professor at Raritan Valley Community College since 1990 and has served as the Coordinator of Foundations in Nursing and the Coordinator of the PN to RN Option. She also worked per diem at the JFK Medical Center, Brain Trauma Center in Edison, NJ for 18 years. She received the NJ League for Nursing President’s Award in 1999, is a five-year recipient of Who’s Who among American Teachers in America, and in 2005 was awarded the American Nursing Association’s Electronic Media Award for “Professor Nightengale’s Test Taking Strategies for Nursing Students.” She is the 2012 President for the NJ League for Nursing.
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