Award Report- Basic Research for Nursing Students: A bi-lingual E-learning Website
Eastern University’s Warner Memorial Library was the recipient of a Small Projects Award to develop the Basic Research for Nursing Students (BRNS): A bi-lingual E-learning Website. The goal was to create an instrument to enrich the learning and research experience of nursing students in our traditional BSN program and in the Korean Nursing Program, which is specialized ESL course.
With the funds we created a tool incorporating a wide variety of Web 2.0 technologies. These technologies included Youtube video sharing, SlideShare presentation sharing, Twitter microblogging, Facebook social networking, Second Life virtual social worlds, RSS feeds and instant messaging via Meebo. The funding provided the opportunity to explore these technologies for library use. With tools from the project we have had the opportunity to promote and explore Library resources and the resources offered through the NNLM. The results have been promising.
Thus far two nursing Informatics classes have been officially assigned to use the BRNS site. This represents about 32 students. The respondents for testing and evaluation of the course material found on the website have been small in number. All the responses have been positive. Nursing faculty has been supportive of our efforts and the majority of the respondents to the evaluation survey rated the elements of the site to be “helpful” to “very helpful”. We are encouraged to do more.
In the coming months, we will continue to develop the site incorporating more language tools for our international students. In addition to the Korean language aids we have created, the site will soon host Mandarin versions of the materials. We are anticipating Spanish translations in the Fall 2009.
Without the funding from the MAR/NNLM we might not have attempted this project. The Small Project Award was a positive incentive to move forward. We also received encouragement and support from James Sauer, Director of the Library, Mary Anne Peters, Director of the Deparmtent of Nursing, Professor Mary Boylston, Department of Nursing and the Librarians and Staff at Warner Memorial Library and the Nursing Students of Eastern University.
Mark Puterbaugh- Warner Memorial Library, St. David’s, Pa.
