Resources for Nurse Educators/ Strategies to Enhance Critical Thinking

Concept mapping, web/mind maps. In groups of 4-5 students assign various aspects of the course; students use markers and post-its to write a concept on post-it, place on board. They can move the post-its around. They can add arms/legs with additional information. They can use directional arrows. During yesterday's class, a student said that she realized the impact the concept map had on her learning. She thought that it was busy work. The students were busily writing down information from the maps. I'll be able to measure the effect of concept mapping from the unit test (possibly).

Inspiration offers a 30 day free trial on concept mapping using different templates.

teach1

As a nursing student, I found the concept approach that Teach1 mentioned to be very helpful.
Many students are cognitive learners, as opposed to verbal learners, and right brained, thus needing to look at a situation from a very different pov as the left brained. Critical thinking involves much more right brained activity, and can be stimulated by music, art, poetry etc.
I also found it helpful to have a sense of, well, balance in learning critical thinking; for example learning ABCs, prioritization and pathophysiology at the same time.
Situational learning was a wonderful learning tool, particularly during the final semester, a kind of what would you do and why scenerio which allowed brainstorming without fear of criticism. One very simple example that seems silly now: during management we were given a situation:
your neighbors' husband is c/o cp after cutting the grass and she asks for your. What do you do? My answer: have him sit still, take an aspirin and call 911. Wrong answer my instructor says, you are practicing medicine w/o a liscense. What?! I don't get it. If I don't do what I know to be the standard of care, won't I be liable? This simple discussion went on for 40 minutes, but the lessons learned were very important to us then.
I may be inappropriate to reply at all, as I have never taught nursing, but I did teach 1st grade for several years before going to nursing school, so please forgive my impetuousness in replying.
God Bless the teachers, I do not envy you your task! Keep up the good work!

Thanks for your tips on critical thinking. I just attended a critical thinking workshop and the things you suggested were exactly what was talked about in the workshop. Many of the clinical instructors are using the concept maps to replace careplans, and instead of the hours of grading careplans, are going over the concept maps individually with students to find out where their thinking is. Some give letter grades, but many were pass/fail. Excellent suggestions, thanks for the tips.