About this Issue: March/April 2018
Developing valid and reliable test items is a critical skill for nursing faculty. Bristol et al examined the test item writing practices of 674 nursing faculty. Here are a few of the findings: Generally faculty have 3-5 teacher made exams in their courses, have about 41 to 55 items per exam, and allow 1.5 minutes to answer each item on the test. The most frequent type of testing policy in a school of nursing relates to academic dishonesty (n=447, 58.1%), followed by policies on requirements for the testing environment, timing of the examination, and test review. Almost all of the faculty (96.5%) include alternate items on their exams such as multiple response, fill-in-the-blank, and others. Use this article in your school as a springboard for discussion of your testing practices. Are you thinking about using digital badges in your course or nursing program? Digital badges are visible indicators of students’ accomplishments and development of new skills. The article by White and Shellenbarger describes considerations when incorporating game-based pedagogies such as digital badges in nursing education. The authors identify potential uses of digital badges and provide a step-by-step process for implementing them. Other articles describe innovative teaching strategies. Faculty in an FNP program piloted a video-enhanced objective structured clinical examination (VE-OSCE), or “flip” of the traditional face-to-face OSCE, to assess students’ clinical performance in an online course using teleconferencing. The authors explain how they designed and implemented the VE-OSCE. Another article describes an interprofessional education curriculum spanning 3 semesters using modules, unfolding case studies, virtual simulation, and shared case planning experiences. If you have done research in nursing education or have that as a future goal, don’t start your next study without reading the article by Raymond et al. They describe issues when trying to recruit and retain nurse educator participants, effective and ineffective sampling strategies, and methods to increase the efficiency of the research process in nursing education. This article is open so you can share it freely with other faculty and colleagues.
Marilyn H. Oermann, Editor-in-Chief
