This is how I teach
This month we spoke to Ms Jo Perry from the Adelaide Nursing School. Jo is one of three staff who will be joining the Adelaide Education Academy, Executive Committee, from May this year. Here she explains how she teaches within our rapidly changing environment and uses gamification to engage her students.
How would you describe your approach to teaching/your teaching philosophy?
I think that in a nutshell, I would say “Carefully planned, casually delivered” would be my teaching style. I have been teaching in tertiary education since 2004, and I can see that the major change has been the upward swing in technology to support teaching. Also, in my undergraduate cohort, access to, and increase in, interactive online gaming has seen a change in the subsequent engagement patterns of students. The main age range of students in the undergraduate nursing program is 20-30 years old, so there has to be matching of the teaching style to the learning styles.
Traditionally, we saw didactic teaching methods employed, but now we tend to go more for interactive, engaging use of technology to meet learning needs. My interest in the gamification of teaching has grown steadily, as student expectations have changed, in an increasingly digitalised world.Jo Perry
My philosophy is to be agile, and to create learning experiences that are not only engaging to the target student cohort, but also add value to their education. This takes very careful and sometimes complex planning, but if delivered simply, with clear messages and learning outcomes, can be some of the most memorable and valuable learning experiences that students have in their program. The delivery should be friendly, and students should feel at ease and eager to participate. It is this balancing act of carefully planning an activity, and being able to deliver it in a low-stress, high-engagement way that I am always working towards.
What do you like most about teaching in your discipline?
I have worked for over 30 years in my discipline, so I am very experienced. I have lots of stories. I really enjoy getting to know students, and by drawing from my experiences, I am able to relate the topic to the “real world”. I think students respond to someone who has not only worked for a long time in the discipline, but is current as well. Being able to have the mix of current industry working knowledge, as well as teaching it, with recent stories and examples, fosters student interest and the topics discussed are relevant to the up-to-date state of industry. So, I would have to say that I enjoy being relevant and current, as I feel that students respond to that.
How does your teaching help prepare students for their future?
I can clearly link the learning outcomes and activities to the industry needs. As I maintain hours within the healthcare industry, I keep my finger on the pulse of the latest guidelines/procedures and policies that are being developed and implemented. Bringing such contemporaneous insights to the students helps them to develop realistic expectations about their future working environment. The practical sessions I run for my undergraduate students are designed to help “put tools in their toolkits” for when they graduate and enter the workforce. I feel as though preparing students with strategies for practice builds resilience with them as they begin their new roles.
Ms Jo Perry
What is your favourite way to use technology to enhance learning?
Hands down this would be collaborating with the Adelaide Simulation Centre in developing practical session activities.
I am quite well known for saying: “I have a crazy idea. Let’s see if this flies!”.Jo Perry
The staff of the Simulation Centre are patient and open-minded to exploring possibilities, and we utilise the amazing facilities to best advantage. I would have to say that the scenarios that we do, where we utilise the high-definition streaming to give students a view of a patient situation from different perspectives, then examine best practice from those perspectives would have to be my favourite use of the technology. But then, I also enjoy seeing the Escape Rooms and Puzzle Stations engage the students. With the online MyUni learning I am working on using H5P, an open-source tool that enables creation of interactive content types and activities, for an activity right now, and also use a game show format for a tutorial.
This is such a hard question to answer; I use technology in so many different ways to meet different needs, I can’t just pick one favourite so I’ll roll with several.
Jo Perry joins Dr Walter Barbieri and Dr Hayley McGrice as the new members of the Adelaide Education Academy Executive group from May 2023.