Albrecht, Swigart Seek to Enhance Nursing Education Through Innovative Learning Projects

Dr. Susan Albrecht was recently awarded a grant from the University of Pittsburgh’s Advisory Council on Instructional Excellence (ACIE) for her project to facilitate “Evidence-based Teaching and Learning the Health Sciences: Principles of Interprofessional Learning in a Clinical Environment.” Dr. Albrecht is Associate Dean for External Relations and Associate Professor in the School of Nursing. Partnering with faculty from the School of Dental Medicine and the School of Pharmacy, Dr. Albrecht aims to enhance clinic learning experiences by improving the educational training of clinical faculty. They will develop and implement several overlapping pedagogical training opportunities for clinical instructors: the project will also incorporate a “train-thetrainer” component to ensure that the project is sustainable beyond the funding period. The ACIE hosts an annual faculty grant program to further strengthen the role of teaching at Pitt and to foster new instructional approaches. 
 

Dr. Valerie Swigart, Professor at the School, was recently announced as the recipient of the 2014 Nursing Excellence in Teaching and Technology (NETT) Award. The School offers this annual award to acknowledge the exceptional efforts of faculty who have enhanced the educational experience of students, patients, or the community through the use of technology. Dr. Swigart, with Michael Gold, Professor Emeritus of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, produced two technologically rich learning tools: a clinical terminology course and a multi-language online dictionary of clinical terms and abbreviations for beginning students in the health sciences. The course, Clinical Terminology for International and US Students, is offered as a MOOC and is a six-week self-paced course for those about the enter clinical study or practice. It focuses on the everyday language of U.S. clinical settings emphasizing terms, abbreviations, clinical relevance and pronunciations. The Clinical Terminology Dictionary is a free-access Web site which  supplements the course and provides reference to common terms and abbreviations in more than 30 languages, including a demonstration of terms in a clinical context.

Congratulations to Dr. Susan Albrecht and Dr. Valerie Swigart!