Course content review

Review course content prior to exams and finals

Level Up RN has the tools you need to get your students engaged and excited about learning. As a nursing educator, you might be able to remember how overwhelming all of the content was when you were studying to become an RN. In our nursing flashcards, we have condensed the content into manageable sections and provided tips and tricks on how to remember the information. As an educator, you can use these flashcards to help guide your reviews and allow students to review key concepts in an interactive and fun way in the classroom.

Gamifying reviews

One nursing instructor shared with us the awesome way she uses our flashcards for exam reviews.

"I like my review sessions to be interactive and in a gaming format. Students love the friendly competition all while making learning fun. It's a game-changer when your instructor walks into class with a giant Jenga game and asks, “Who's ready to review?”

I have my students play Jenga but every time a block is removed from the tower, a student must draw from the deck of Level Up RN flashcards before moving to the next player. This is when the review of content kicks in.

The student reads the topic on the card to the rest of the class and they work collectively to recall all important concepts related to the specific topic.

In no time, my students are having so much fun seeing who will tip the tower of Jenga blocks that they forget they are in a nursing class reviewing for an upcoming exam!"

Evaluating if the review session was beneficial

Student feedback has been extremely positive in scenarios like the above. Students say they enjoy making learning fun and competitive and discussing the content that they recall.

This allows students to identify their own areas of weakness. They prefer this over traditional lectures and slide presentations.

Outline for lecture material

Do you find yourself spending hours, weeks, or even months trying to edit and prepare slide presentations for lecture?

Preparing slide presentations for lecture and having a plan for each week can be very time consuming, as there is a large amount of content that needs to be covered in a short period of time.

Using Level Up RN flashcards as an outline for your lecture can save you time and help manage the flow of content and how it's delivered to students. The flashcards also provide tips and tricks for remembering difficult concepts. As an educator, you can share these ideas to help students retain the material.

Student aid in a flipped classroom

Students teaching one another

In a flipped classroom, students should be coming to lecture prepared and ready to apply the knowledge they have reviewed at home.

Instead of the educator sitting at the front of the class lecturing from a slide presentation, the students teach each other. The educator is there to facilitate and ask questions as needed. Students can be broken into small groups, with each group being given a topic to focus on.

Students usually need time to prepare their lecture portion for the day. Level Up RN flashcards can be used to support the flipped classroom format, by allowing students to use the flashcards to guide their lecture and focus on important content. Our to-the-point flashcards can function as a type of cue card for the student who is presenting their lecture.

Unfolding case studies

An unfolding case study is another instructional strategy that overlaps with the flipped classroom scenario. In an unfolding case study, students are oftentimes required to look up information related to the patient diagnosis, laboratory values, and specific medications the patient is currently prescribed.

Level Up RN flashcards can be used as a student aid in this unfolding case study scenario—Using the flashcards while providing care to the simulated patient allows students to have an additional resource outside of the patient chart.

The flashcards can help guide critical thinking while allowing students to dive deeper into the content they previously learned in a traditional classroom setting. The flashcards can be similarly useful in a clinical setting….

Student aid in a clinical setting

Students can use Level Up RN flashcards to help understand a disease process their patient may have prior to actually interacting with the patient.

The Pharmacology flashcards can help students understand the different medications their patients are on and what labs or side effects they need to monitor.

The Lab Values flashcards will help students understand normal ranges for labs and why someone may have an abnormal result.

By referencing flashcards across a range of subjects, the students can put together a robust care plan for their patient prior to ever meeting the patient. Using this method, students will also have a better understanding of the patient and their treatments prior to meeting the patient. This helps the students better understand what they are walking into and what to expect when providing care for their assigned patient.

Debrief

After clinical, there is often a debrief, where questions like these are asked:

• Is there a concept students didn't understand in the clinical setting that day?
• Is there a patient diagnosis that they haven't cared for in the past?
• Is there a knowledge gap from what they learned in the didactic setting to how they are applying that information in the clinical setting?

This debrief is where you can review the key components of a specific topic or medication to help students better understand. Level Up RN flashcards can be a useful aid during these sessions. You can bring out the flashcards that cover the students' specific topics and discuss and review the material in detail.

Another strategy in a clinical debrief is to preselect flashcards that apply to the clinical experience for the day. For each student, draw one of the preselected flashcards and have the student explain that concept to you—it can be their ticket to leave for the day!