What does a concept-based curriculum in nursing education look like?
Concept-based learning is an educational method that focuses on the big ideas and teaches students how to organize and categorize information. Content just focuses on facts, while concept focuses on making sense of those facts and the world around us. Instead of the traditional method of learning which concentrates on the ability to recall specific facts in isolation, concept-based learning concentrates on the understanding of broader principles (concepts) that can be applied to a variety of specific examples.
Concept-based learning challenges students to think more critically about the new subjects and situations they encounter by applying prior knowledge and experience. Students must think beyond the facts and connect factual knowledge to ideas of conceptual significance and find relevance.
Nursing leaders are recognizing the merits of a concept-based curriculum to accommodate students’ diverse learning styles, to efficiently deliver increasing amounts of instructional content, and to help them develop the critical thinking skills they need to succeed as nurses. A concept-based curriculum provides the structured framework to help create the learning outcomes, the instructional delivery and lesson objectives, and the student assessments.
A concept-based curriculum in nursing involves examining concepts that link to the delivery of patient care. During the course of study, students focus on key, prevalent examples, and their interconnected nature. Students learn to recognize features of a condition and begin to apply what they have learned to a variety of situations.
At Wolters Kluwer, for example, our Lippincott nurse educator experts and editors organize our trusted content by concept and exemplar, based on the 58 more commonly taught concepts and nearly 400 supporting exemplars. You can find a list of our concepts and exemplars here. Our Lippincott CoursePoint for Nursing Concepts includes more than 2,500 digital textbook readings, drawing from the following textbooks and organized by concept and exemplar: