NURS 764 Week 3 Discussion Board Forum 2 Example

Discussion Board Forum 2: Diverse Learners and My Teaching Topic

NURS 764 Learning Theories and Teaching Methods for Nurse Educators, Discussion Board Forum 2

Thread by [Student Name]

The cohort and the classmate are composites; the textbooks and the three journal articles cited are real.

My golden minute project will be taught to a cohort of about forty-eight junior BSN students. At least six learned English after another language, several are older second-degree students who describe themselves as anxious in front of younger peers, and two have documented accommodations, one for a hearing loss and one for extended time. The golden minute is hard for all of them in particular ways. The scenario is fast and spoken: someone calls out that the baby is not breathing, and the team must answer in short phrases while acting. It is performed in front of classmates, and it demands quick, coordinated hand movements at a crowded warmer.

Sezer et al. (2026) interviewed twenty international undergraduate students learning psychomotor skills in a nursing program taught in a language other than their own. Early learning was marked by language barriers, cultural differences, unfamiliar equipment, performance anxiety and trouble with medical terms. What helped was visual scaffolding, clear structured guidance, immediate feedback and peer support, which let students reinterpret the early difficulty through repeated practice, watching others and reflecting. Their findings match what I have seen: my students who learned English later rarely lack the knowledge, but the speed of spoken commands overwhelms them.

From that study and from Billings and Halstead (2016) on teaching students from diverse backgrounds, I plan five changes. First, a laminated pictorial action plan, like the one used in Helping Babies Breathe, will hang at every warmer, so the sequence is visible as well as spoken. Second, a one-page list of the ten phrases used in the scenario, such as "not breathing, starting ventilation" and "chest is rising," will be taught and practiced before simulation day. Third, demonstration videos will be captioned, which serves my student with hearing loss and every student who wants to replay a step. Fourth, students will first practice in pairs with a peer before running the scenario in a team of four.

The fifth change concerns anxiety. Rudolph et al. (2014) argue that simulation learners take risks only inside a safe container, which the facilitator builds before the scenario by clarifying objectives and expectations, agreeing that the simulation will be treated as real, attending to logistics and stating a commitment to respect learners. My prebriefing will include each of these, including the plain statement that errors are expected and will be discussed without judgment.

None of these changes lowers the objective; every student must still ventilate within sixty seconds, but more of them will get there. Each of the five also helps students who did not need it, which is why I will build them into the standard plan rather than offering them on request. I will also ask the cohort, in an anonymous survey after the first simulation day, which of the five they used and which they would keep, so the changes are judged by the learners they were meant for.

Reply to Danielle

Danielle, your online RN to BSN course has many students writing in a second language, and your plan for discussion forums is generous. You might find Thompson and Hawkins (2026) useful, although their sample was graduate students. They surveyed forty-one online nursing students who spoke English as a second language, with twenty-seven native languages among them, and reported strong confidence alongside three main difficulties: the extra time learning takes, the effect of language on test performance and a sense of vulnerability when communicating. Their recommendations follow equity-mindedness, the idea that faculty should change course design rather than expect students to adjust alone. For your foot assessment module, that might mean posting key terms with definitions before each forum and allowing a short recorded reply in place of a written one. How are your quizzes timed at present?

References

Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2016). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (5th ed.). Elsevier.

Rudolph, J. W., Raemer, D. B., & Simon, R. (2014). Establishing a safe container for learning in simulation: The role of the presimulation briefing. Simulation in Healthcare, 9(6), 339-349. https://doi.org/10.1097/SIH.0000000000000047

Sezer, E., Şen Olgay, S., Yıldız Çelik, H., Uğur, E., & Karabacak, Ü. (2026). Transformative experiential learning in psychomotor skill development: A model informed by international nursing students' learning experiences. Frontiers in Medicine, 13, Article 1796125. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2026.1796125

Thompson, C. N., & Hawkins, D. E. (2026). Operationalizing equity-mindedness for graduate English as a second language students in online nursing programs. Journal of Professional Nursing, 66, 170-177. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2026.07.001