Kathleen Mira, who graduated from the Red River Teacher Education Business and Technology program is one of several RRC grads featured in the 2017 Eye to the Sky Billboard Campaign.
A graduate of the Red River College’s Business?Technology Teacher Education program, Mira has taught at Technical Vocational High School in Winnipeg West End since 1999.
Mira has taught it all at Tec-Voc, from computer and software applications to accounting principles and systems to retailing, promotions and entrepreneurship, and everything in between. She says her time at RRC prepared her well for the multi-faceted and ever changing world of business.
Read more on Ms. Mira here
Red River College is committed to enhancing mental health programming for students, staff, and faculty. On March 22nd, TSN’s Michael Landsberg presented at the college to help raise awareness of mental health through his #SICKNOTWEAK talk.
Michael is one of the faces of Bell Let’s Talk Day, in which Bell contributed 5¢ towards mental health initiatives by counting every text, call, tweet, Instagram post, Facebook video view, and Snapchat geofilter.
If you were unable to attend the live #SICKNOTWEAK presentation, you can watch it on-demand here.
We were pleased to welcome 11 students to Red River Teacher Education for the morning of Thursday March 23rd. It was such a pleasure to meet some of our youth as excited about learning as we are about teaching! Thank you to Raman Job from MTS for providing us with the wonderful movie about the day.
Click on the video below!
Attention Civil and Construction Management Students,
Have some of you recently secured a co-op position that requires completion of the ACI Level 1 Concrete Field Testing Technician course?
Please sign up as soon as possible, as space is limited.
The course will run in the CARSI Lab from May 1st to May 4th, 2017.
The cost is $420.00 CDN payable now or on the first day the class. Registration Forms are available in the Civil Co-op office (Room A1-28).
Congratulations to Nursing instructor, Kim Mitchell, on receiving the Bravo Award for Research Excellence!
The Research Excellence award recognizes an individual who has made an outstanding contribution in support of applied research, contributed to establishing an environment that welcomes research, supports others in their research endeavours, and or made an outstanding contribution to a course/project/program/community partner. This award recognizes Kim’s contribution not only to nursing research but to a culture of research within the Nursing Department.
In addition to being a career nurse educator, Kim’s focus of study is a topic applicable to nursing education – exploring writing self-efficacy and its impact on writing performance in undergraduate nursing students. Writing self-efficacy is a concept that has been demonstrated to predict student grades and is thought to be a more powerful predictor of student performance than writing ability. Writing assignments are thought to contribute to student knowledge and critical thinking skills, which has the potential to positively affect student ability to communicate within multidisciplinary teams using the language of evidenced informed practice. Additionally, writing assignments are thought to benefit student ability to integrate theoretical knowledge within their clinical experiences; however, there has been little empirical testing to explore this hypothesis within the discipline of nursing.
Kim’s interest in exploring writing self-efficacy in nursing students began in 2011 when she initiated a pilot study to assess the effectiveness of the discipline specific scholarly writing course that she developed for the RRC nursing baccalaureate program. The study was a pretest posttest design study, which measured writing self-efficacy and anxiety in first year students before and after their first-year scholarly writing course. The description of this study and the course content it investigates has been accepted and will be published in the journal Quality Advancements in Nursing Education for spring 2017.
In 2013, she repeated this initial study and expanded the original one group quasi-experimental design to include a time control period. A comparison between online and classroom writing instruction experiences was also assessed. A portion of this cohort of students also participated in a long-term follow up study in the 2015-2016 academic year and that project is currently in data analysis. With a team of colleagues, Kim has also conducted an in-depth analysis of existing writing self-efficacy tools published in the literature in order to understand the conceptual constructs used to measure writing self-efficacy. This project has been accepted by the Journal of Nursing Measurement to be published along with an editorial on the subject in or around August 2017.
It became evident, after four research projects in this area, that doctoral education was the next step in the advancement of Kim’s research knowledge and skills. She applied and was accepted to the doctor of nursing program at the University of Manitoba for the fall of 2016. She is currently completing coursework toward this goal. The writing self-efficacy tool used to measure the concept in her three previous studies was one of her own creation and was designed to measure aspects of writing self-efficacy specific to the scholarly writing course she was delivering. As a result, her goal in the doctoral program is to redevelop and test this scale for more general use within nursing education. One of her first doctoral assignments exploring academic writing voice from the perspectives of objectivity and feminism has been accepted for publication in Nursing Inquiry.
Friends and Family Night – Wednesday May 3 // 10 am to 8 pm
Industry Night – Thursday May 4 // 5 pm
Design Store will be open both evenings.
See our Grad portfolios at: http://2017.rrcdesignshow.ca/
Ever wonder how you can create a flipped classroom?
Nursing instructors Sandy Alguire and Monica Burfoot, along with recently retired course leader, Wilma Schroeder, have created a flipped classroom in family nursing education. The International Family Nursing Association recently highlighted the implementation of this model by our instructors, as well as the benefits that it creates for their students.
To learn more, read the article here.
Missed last week’s mindfulness presentation? Watch it on-demand! Click the image to view:
TGIF… Not only was it the final Friday of the term before exams, but many Nursing faculty took the opportunity to attend a presentation on Mindfulness. This Lunch and Learn was presented by Vidhu Bhanot from Counselling and Accessibility at Red River College. It was a perfect way to spend an hour learning about mindfulness meditation, what it is, and how it can be so beneficial for our students… and ourselves.
Mindfulness is a form of mental exercise that can cultivate self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-compassion. Vidhu shared the results of her Mindfulness Group Pilot study involving a small group of Nursing students. After engaging in regular mindfulness techniques and activities, students found they were able to manage stress in a healthier way. Another benefit (although unintended) was the effect of creating healthier family relationships.
We engaged in a breathing practice exercise led by Vindhu, breathing in through the nose (4 seconds), holding our breath (7 seconds), and then slowly exhaling (8 seconds). The trick, we were told, was to keep the exhale longer than the inhale so as to initiate a vagus nerve response. By doing this, we can interrupt the body’s own stress response.
It was very interesting to learn about the history of mindfulness and its application to stress and pain management. Hopefully we can incorporate more mindfulness into our own lives and educate our students to help them manage the stresses of school/life. Training our minds is not easy – we must be kind and keep practicing. Meanwhile… “Happy Break Week!”
RRC Polytech campuses are located on the lands of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, Anishininew, Dakota, and Dené, and the National Homeland of the Red River Métis.
We recognize and honour Treaty 3 Territory Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, the source of Winnipeg’s clean drinking water. In addition, we acknowledge Treaty Territories which provide us with access to electricity we use in both our personal and professional lives.