Michael Youngwood I came from a traditional curriculum with traditional course materials, as did many of my peers. There was always too much content and not enough time to teach it. The traditional format often consisted of inundating students with vast amounts of information without explaining how it fit into the bigger picture. We knew we needed something designed for the 21st-century learner—a non-linear way of looking at nursing and how to deliver care. We needed a new approach to better immerse our students in the learning process and prepare them for practice. We found this in concept-based learning.

We had been searching for something that was electronic but also user friendly. What struck me most about [Lippincott CoursePoint for Nursing Concepts] was the seamless integration of its components. Students can access all of their digital textbooks, resources, multimedia, journals, and clinical references in one place. The integrated PrepU adaptive learning also lets us monitor their progress and identify their weaknesses early on.

We also use vSim for Nursing and Lippincott DocuCare; I use them to flip the classroom, breaking up a class into several smaller groups to work on the same vSim case, then compare notes and discuss as a group. The whole class gets the big picture because everyone has a hand in it.

I’ve told my students, “I am so proud of where you are. You are thinking on a level that is a semester or two beyond where you should be at this point in the program.”

Since we’ve adopted a concept-based curriculum and Wolters Kluwer’s solutions, I’ve watched students’ critical thinking skyrocket.

  • Within just two days of adopting adaptive learning, 10 of my students had answered 2,000 PrepU questions. By the end of the eight-week session, they had answered 16,000 questions. They always asked for more.
  • The class average for the LPN to RN transition cohort at graduation is 94.6% – 11 to 12 points higher than the previous year, before adoption of a concepts-based curriculum.
  • The class average for my traditional student cohort group of 45 is 92.2%.

Wolters Kluwer gave us the tools to facilitate 21st-century learning and find the missing pieces of the broader conceptual puzzles. When we fully realized how these programs could literally transform our classroom and student learning, we were all in.

– Michael Youngwood, MSN, Nurse educator
Haywood Community College, North Carolina

How concepts bridge the gap between knowledge and application
Screenshot of Michael Youngwood video

Concept-based instruction has been gaining in popularity in nursing programs across the country, but many questions remain about how this educational model works in practice. For instance, how does conceptual learning differ from traditional learning? How does it prepare student nurses to exercise clinical judgment when treating real patients?

In this video, Michael Youngwood, MSN, of Haywood Community College in North Carolina, addresses these issues and explains how easily a concept-based curriculum can bridge the gap from the accumulation of knowledge to the application of critical thinking at the patient’s bedside.

Contact us today to learn more about how a concept-based curriculum can work in your nursing program.

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