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Education & Teaching
Explore insights and resources for nurse educators in our Education & Teaching blogs. Enhance your skills as a nurse educator today!


Student Evaluations of Teaching: What NP Faculty Should Do When the Feedback Hurts
A 2022 article published in Medical Education Online titled "When Students' Words Hurt: 12 Tips for Helping Faculty Receive and Respond Constructively to Student Evaluations of Teaching" by Cornes and colleagues offers evidence-based guidance for exactly this moment. I'm breaking down their key recommendations here through the lens of NP faculty life, because this research is too good not to keep sharing.
May 45 min read


For Nursing Faculty: How to Give Meaningful Student Feedback Without Draining Your Emotional Capacity
You open the gradebook. There are 24 discussion posts, 18 SOAP notes, or a stack of concept maps waiting for your feedback. You take a breath, open the first submission, and (if you're anything like most graduate nursing faculty) you feel the familiar pull to just fix it all. Here's the truth no one says loudly enough: you are not responsible for fixing everything, and trying to do so doesn't actually help students learn. In this post, we review how to give feedback that supp
Apr 196 min read


What No One Tells You About Teaching Graduate Nursing Students
Your graduate nursing students are the not the same “blank slates” that they used to be in their undergraduate programs. These students are nurses. Some of them will have twenty years of professional nursing wisdom, while others will be fresh from a BSN program, and they can all be admitted together in the same cohort. This heterogeneity is not a challenge to be managed. It is a gift to be used. But only if you understand two theoretical frameworks: andragogy & constructivism
Apr 66 min read


Rethinking Discussion Boards for Graduate Nursing Students: 5 Alternatives That Promote Clinical Thinking
Research on higher-order learning consistently shows that students rise to the level of the task they are given. If the task is to post a thoughtful summary, that is what they will do. If the task is to reason through a complex clinical situation, differentiate between competing diagnoses, and defend a management decision — well, that is a fundamentally different cognitive experience.
The format of discussion boards is not the barrier. The design is.
Mar 305 min read


Designing Nursing Tests That Measure Clinical Reasoning — Not Just Memorization
If our goal is to prepare safe, competent, entry-level nurse practitioners, then the exams must reflect the cognitive work of practice, not just the cognitive work of memorization.
Mar 95 min read


Creating Assignments That Prepare NP Students for Real Clinical Practice
The moment I started rethinking assignments was the moment I asked myself this question: Would this help a student on their first day as an NP?
Not pass boards.
Not earn an A.
But could it correlate to a real patient encounter?
Feb 144 min read


How to Read and Actually Use a Test Item Analysis Report
Item analysis reports are packed with numbers, short on explanation, and often dropped into your inbox with zero guidance. But buried in that spreadsheet is information that can make your exams fairer, clearer, and easier to defend—once you know what to look for.
Below are the five item analysis statistics that matter most, what they actually mean, and how to use them without spiraling.
Feb 84 min read


Common Teaching Mistakes New NP Faculty Make (and How to Fix Them Quickly)
Stepping into a faculty role as a nurse practitioner is both exciting and overwhelming. You bring years of clinical expertise, professional judgment, and real-world insight—but teaching requires an entirely different skill set. The good news? Most teaching missteps new NP faculty make are completely normal , highly fixable, and often rooted in trying too hard to do things “right.” Whether you’re teaching face-to-face, online, or a blend of both, here are the most common mist
Jan 123 min read


Active Learning Strategies That Actually Work in Asynchronous NP Courses
(With the learning theory behind why they work!) Asynchronous courses are often mislabeled as passive —but that’s a design issue, not a delivery issue. When grounded in educational theory, asynchronous NP courses can promote deep clinical reasoning, sustained engagement, and professional identity formation without relying on live sessions or excessive faculty workload. This post connects what works in asynchronous NP education with why it works , giving you language you
Jan 45 min read


Tech Tools for Virtual NP Faculty
(because “just upload the slides” is not a pedagogical strategy) If you’ve taught online before, you already know that virtual education isn’t simply transferring your in-person content to an LMS and hoping for the best – especially when teaching the next generation of advanced practice nurses. Teaching adult students online means translating clinical reasoning, professional judgment, and identity formation into a digital space — while also managing discussion boards, gra
Dec 29, 20255 min read


11 Clinical Teaching Tips for NP Preceptors
Practical strategies to grow the next generation of NPs—without adding to your workload. Precepting isn’t just a service to your profession—it's one of the most meaningful ways to shape how future NPs think, communicate, and practice. But let's be honest: teaching while managing a full clinical day can feel like juggling flaming torches on roller skates. You’re not alone, and you don’t need to overhaul your workflow to be an excellent preceptor. Small, intentional teaching mo
Dec 10, 20253 min read


Lesson Planning for Asynchronous NP Faculty: How to Teach Beyond Recorded Lectures
Asynchronous teaching often gets a bad reputation. Too often, it’s reduced to: ✔ Upload a lecture ✔ Share a PDF ✔ Post a discussion board …and hope the learning happens. But asynchronous learning can be incredibly engaging when it’s intentionally designed. NP students are adult learners juggling practice, school, and life. They thrive when content is interactive, flexible, and cognitively activating. This post walks you through how to plan an asynchronous lesson that feels d
Dec 3, 20253 min read


Formative Feedback for NP Faculty (& FREE Downloadable Guide!)
Formative feedback is one of the most powerful tools NP educators and preceptors have — and yet, it is often the most underutilized. Graduate-level NP learners don’t simply need to be told whether something was done correctly or incorrectly. They need coaching and feedback rooted in adult learning principles that supports growth, reflection, clinical reasoning development, and confidence. But here’s what often gets overlooked: Formative feedback is not about final judgment
Nov 19, 20254 min read
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