I really like the "weakest think" activity. I try to engage my students by allowing them various ways and opportunities to encounter the information they need to learn. This activity allows them to encounter scenarios that could potentially be difficult for them to deal with in a real clinical setting. By removing the stress associated with first encounters in the real world the student is given the opportunity to slow down, think critically, and formulate a viable answer to the problem. Hoopefully, when they encounter difficult or out of the ordinary situations in "the real world" they will react calmly and appropriately.
therese, I'm glad you find this is a particularly useful activity for your classes.
Michele Deck
I like the "weakest think" activity. I teach medical assistants and want them to be confident and competent with their skills. I want them to be able to use good critical thinking skills out in the real world. I want to know if they are ready and capable of handling situations between other health care providers as well as their patients. Safety is very important to me especially when I am teaching them drug administration. I look forward to presenting scenerios that they may encounter. I will include pass situtations that I have heard about on externships that were not handled properly.
Therese
Christopher, you just need to do some prep work to find any number of these examples.
Michele Deck
I like "what is wrong with this picture?". Many students like the visual aid component. And there are endless ways to use this one depending on what pictures and videos you can find.
Kim, I agree when you use this activity to assess thinking skills, you can correct misunderstandings.
Michele Deck
Heather, if you prepare a set of these wekest think cards you can reuse them over and over.
Michele Deck
Randa, yes, this will foster discussion and allow you to stress the most important practices.
Michele Deck
I liked staff surprises. We see lots of opportunities at the clinical site for improvement and it generates lots of discussion.
Breaking the students up into groups works very well for our classes. I like the idea of the weakest thinker as well.
I feel as an educator of nursing students that the "weakest think" teaching strategy would fit best with my teaching style. I incorporated many different strategies, such as games, jigsaw activities, and case studies to not only enhance the content but to assess understanding. The weakest think activity allows educators to assess critical thinking skills in a variety of situations and to identify areas of weakness.
Tracee, I like the 3 levels of the cards you are describing. This allows progression of thought.
Michele Deck
The Weakest link has a lot of possibilities. I developed a game of scenarios, they draw the scenario, it gives them patient info, but not what they are treating. Then there are symptoms cards, second stage cards and end stage cards. It teaches and assess critical thinking and eases some anxiety before they hit the real world.
Georgiajo, I'm so glad you are finding activities and applications o your classes. I know you will have success with these two.
Michele Deck
I will definetly use the Brush with Fame in my Medical Law and Ethics class. This activity will make it very clear as to why HIPAA was established and must be followed.
I also plan to use Eyes or Ears in my Clinical Procedures class where I teach them about Patient Assessment. I am very interested to see the outcome of this activity as I believe many people lack in attention to physical characteristics and this is an important skill to have in the health profession.
DeeAnne, thanks for sharing your wonderful ideas!
Michele Deck
DeeAnne, this is a wonderful example of involving students in a learning partnership that incorporates personal responsibility and buy in.
Michele Deck
DeeAnne, I'm glad the course has offered you resources and strategies you can use.
Michele Deck
RE: General and Oral Pathology again.
This course adapts well to a combination of auditory, kinesthetic and visual learning. We have developed a Term Pathology Board Project where students are graded on creativity, accuracy and educational content.
They must create a Pathology board using physical objects that best depict both the appearance and tactile presentation of lesion descripters such a fluctuant, papillary, vesicular etc.
They have become very creative with theme based pathology boards and we invite our Advisory Board, along with other faculty and students to come and judge their presentation with the People's Choice award.
This has made learning Pathology creative, educational and fun.
Another strategy I have used during a 3 hour General Pathology course is to take a section of content and assign groups of 2-3 students to a specific condition with a list of things they must look up about the condition.
EG: Condition is Turners Syndrome, and they must identify the following things: Pathogenesis, Distinguishing Characteristics,Differential Diagnosis, Extra Oral Manifestations, Peri-Oral and Intra-Oral Manifestations, Prognosis, Tx, etc.
They are allowed 15-20 minutes in the computer lab to compile this information into a power point after which they return to class at a designated time. Each group presents the information they have developed in a 3-5 minute time period.
This helps break up the long course, gets them involved in learning how to access databases and gives them presentation experience as well.
They always seem to enjoy this process and I am able to grade their quizzes while they are putting together their presentations. WIN WIN!
