Academic News

Students from Red River College’s Business/Technology Teacher Education program extended their reach clear across the globe last month, while taking part in an international conference on emerging classroom technologies.

The students, all pre-service teachers in Eva Brown’s second-year Teacher Ed. ICT and Multimedia classes, were participants in the 2013 Flat Classroom Conference, held March 8-10 at Yokohama International School in Japan.

Read the full report and see their video

Would you like your business to run 100% faster? 1,000?

Some WIKISPEED projects move 10,000% faster than industry norms because of their blend of Agile, Lean, Scrum, and Extreme Programming & Manufacturing practices. WIKISPEED has some of the best in the world when it comes to Agile for software, manufacturing, R&D, and other industries.

Here’s your chance. WINNIspeed is WIKIspeed, the Winnipeg agile event of 2013. Build a car with Joe Justice of Team WIKISPEED June 10-11. And in the process, learn how agile can transform your organization to reach that 10,000%.

Josh Pruden and Joel Gamache along with their team placed 1st in the NASA App Challenge 2013. The event was hosted at the University of Manitoba. Living on Mars Challenge, CTV News

Joe Justice of Team WIKISPEED can help you get there in Manitoba’s agile event of the year, WINNISPEED, coming to a college near you (Red River, actually) in June.

0 to awesome in 25,200 seconds

In just 7 hours (25,200 seconds) you will build a 100 mpg car from scratch, and in the process experience how Joe and Team WIKISPEED leveraged agile methodologies borrowed from IT to transform the manufacturing process.

Come learn how agile can transform your organization in 25,200 seconds (or less).

Details at winnispeed.ca.

Please join us for displays and a pizza lunch in the library hallway May 6th and 7th, as our students and faculty showcase Nursing: A Leading Force for Change.

The College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba (CRNM) will be honouring two of our nursing faculty with awards on Thursday May 9. Winn Briscoe and Leslie Walsh will be presented with the Award of Excellence in Nursing Education.  The award presentation and dinner is at Canad Inns Polo Park from 5:00-9:00. Tickets are available from pyeates@crnm.mb.ca or (204) 789-0662. No reserved seating. The order deadline is May 2nd.

Congratulations Winn and Leslie!

The Western North-Western Region Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (WNRCASN) recently held their annual nurse educators’ conference in Edmonton on February 21-23, 2013. This conference facilitated the sharing of ideas, strategies, philosophies, and research findings to develop the scholarship of nursing. Several RRC nursing faculty presented at the conference and a brief description of their projects is included.

• Building Self-Efficacy In Scholarly Writing In First Year Nursing Students (Author: Kim Mitchell)

The complex task of researching and writing a scholarly paper is anxiety provoking for students. This presentation detailed the process of developing a course in scholarly writing within the context of delivering course material to an audience of 150-200 students. Preliminary research findings regarding the course’s influence on anxiety and self-efficacy were also presented.

• Arts-based Learning: Creating Art to Reflect on Practice, Reflecting on Art to Inform Practice (Authors: Kendra Rieger, Luanne Hill, Joanne Loughery)

Arts-based learning is an innovative teaching strategy in which learning is designed to occur through the use of one or more art form(s) integrated with subject matter from another academic discipline. This presentation discussed two arts based learning exemplars and the potential for arts-based learning in the current nursing curriculum.

• Arts-based Learning: Analysis of the Concept for Nursing Education (Presented by: Kendra Rieger; Authors: Kendra Rieger and Dr. Wanda Chernomas — University of Manitoba)

There is a call for a significant shift in curricula away from content focused designs and towards developing environments in which learning processes are emphasized and active student engagement is fostered. Arts-based learning (ABL) is an innovative strategy which engages learners and simultaneously connects thoughts with feelings as part of the learning process.  This presentation focuses on a concept analysis of ABL within the nursing education environment.

• Using Client Actors in Nursing Education: The Highest Kind of Fidelity (Authors: Karlene Cifuentes, Brenda Enns, Richel Roque, Jennifer Otto)

The new Baccalaureate Nursing program at Red River College identified a need to integrate a wide variety of innovative teaching approaches.  Using client actors in nursing clinical simulation was one such teaching approach. This presentation discussed the process of integrating client actors into nursing education, the difference between client actor scenarios and standard case studies, and future directions with the approach.

• Professional Identity Development in Nursing Education: A Study in Progress (Presented by Brenda Enns; Authors: Brenda Enns, Virginia Vandall-Walker — Athabaska University)

Positive Proffessional Nursing Identity (PNI) development has been associated with greater satisfaction with one’s work and improved patient outcomes. This presentation focused on preliminary findings from a qualitative grounded theory investigation into positive PNI which has the potential to inform educational and clinical practice changes that could promote new graduates’ abilities to consolidate and enact positive PNIs in practice.

Trying on the Trades carpentry pano. The best of both worlds, information technology and carpentry.

Arrival night in Chicago

• The Art Institute of Chicago
• The Museum of Contemporary Art
• Frank Lloyd Wright Studio and Oak Park
• Wilis (Sears) Tower
• Architectural Riverboat Tour

And of course just the fun of being in such a great city!

The annual group Shot

Nursing students spend much of their time learning to document clinical findings at the bedside. Instructor Tasha Holt and Instructional Designer Claudius Soodeen developed a mobile application to guide first year students in correct procedures and terminology. The project won a 2012 Learning Innovation Award.