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Welcome to the newest email series - and this one is going to be fun - and a little different … 🤗

Since the summit took place last month, there are a few new readers in our community, and if that is you, welcome! And if you have been reading for a while, thank you for being here! 👋

This newsletter is about active learning, life as an educator, and ways we can improve nursing education together. Sometimes they will be an active learning tool, a discussion about current trends, or a series that lets us dive deeper into a topic. You can read the previous emails, including the popular series about AI and nursing education, HERE.

As we approach the final stretch of the semester, the newsletter will take a slight turn inward. Before BreakoutRN, I was a nurse educator in an ADN program where I taught in the final year of the program. And as I ventured into a creative business, it has been bumpy. And I wanted to share a bit of that experience with you. This next email series will be a bit less technical teaching and instead a bit more personal look at how messy a creative process can be.

🎨 I hope that by sharing, you will feel a bit more confident in your own creative teaching journey.

The Plan

🧑🏿‍🤝‍🧑🏽The idea of social learning theory is that we learn through shared experiences. Introduced by Albert Bandura, social learning theory finds educational value in observation, imitation, and interaction with others. It is an essential piece of active learning, often seen in small group work, think-pair-share activities, observed simulation, or 1:1 clinical experiences with a practicing nurse. I think it is one of the best ways to communicate more abstract topics, like leadership and ethical values.

And it can be extremely motivating! 🎉 Like when you see a really cool learning activity and feel inspired to take on your own version. So I was thinking, what if we (this mightly email community) took on a project before the holiday break?

I have been putting off creating my next batch of active learning case studies decks. I had been feeling overwhelmed, lacked creative fuel, and just felt like it was too BIG of a project for right now. 😔

But then I thought, what if I could build it with you all?

WHAT IF this next round of decks could be built alongside this community, with their input the whole way? What would that version look like?

Well, according to the social learning theory, it would be a lot more fun, energetic and authentic! So let’s do this!

Here is the plan:

Over the next five weeks, I want to try to work together to get five new decks to my illustrators. Is this a lofty goal? Absolutely! But my brain likes to batch (keep working on the same task rather than switching between work), so I think we can do it. Here are the decks I want to work on:

• OB Clinical Decision
• Death/Chronic Illness
• Spinal Injury
• Amputee
• ????

Notice, the last deck is ???? - and this is where you can help me. What should the final topic/clinical scenario be?

📩 Just hit reply and let me know what clinical topic, disease process, or community health issue you would like to see and we will build it together.

So next week, we can go through this project’s planning process in Notion (a task management tool), and we can get started on these decks!

See you next week! Martha