Assignment Spotlight: Simulating a Quality Improvement Project Design

In this month's Assignment Spotlight, I am highlighting a teaching strategy from the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) website called Simulating a Quality Improvement Project Design. Although it's designed for a classroom setting, I'll highlight how it can be adapted for an online environment.

QSEN is a national initiative with the goal of preparing future nurses with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) necessary to improve patient care quality and safety. The KSAs are organized into six competencies: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. 

The Simulating a Quality Improvement Project Design is a project that allows students to apply the basics of quality improvement to a clinical problem they identify in their own work environment (this project is designed for RN-BS students who are currently in practice). I love this idea because I do a similar project where students implement a quality improvement project in a community setting.

The instructions for this project can be found on the QSEN website. It is broken down into 4 parts. The first 3 parts include:

• Part 1: Define the problem, determine a need, and form an aim statement
• Part 2: Define measures, cause and effect diagram, and building your team  
• Part 3: Identify and choose a change, developing the PDSA cycle  

These parts are very simple to apply online. Students can either post this in a course discussion board, submit it through the Assignment feature in the Learning Management System, or submit through a third party tool like Padlet or VoiceThread.

The final part is to develop a scholarly poster. I LOVE this because it reaches right to the top of Bloom's Taxonomy and allows students to be creative. The development of a poster presentation is similar to a blog post I published a little while ago that you can find HERE. There are several resources online where students can have their poster developed, but don't actually have to print it out. You can also download a template provide students with powerpoint poster templates and have them use that in their presentation. Then students can simply make a recording of their poster overview.

As a culmination, I might have students make a VoiceThread presentation that presents a brief overview of each of the parts of the project and end with the poster overview.

Big highlight to Sarah Coiner, MSN, RN-BC, CNL, CNE who submitted this assignment to the QSEN website. You can view details of the assignment HERE. 

I'd LOVE to hear your ideas of how you can effectively use this assignment in your online courses. Share your thoughts, experiences and ideas in The Online Educator Facebook Group by clicking the link HERE. Also, as a treat don’t forget to GRAB YOUR FREE GUIDE to the 3 Secrets to Teaching Online Successfully.

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