August 2024
It’s my pleasure to bring you this message on behalf of the Certification Board of Commissioners.
The NLN recognizes “academic nursing education as a specialty and an advanced nursing practice role” (Christensen & Simmons, 2020, p. 1). As such, they continue to increase the types of certifications available to academic nurse educators. Currently, there are three certifications available: , Certified Academic Clinical Nurse Educator (CNEcl) , and Certified Novice Nurse Educator (CNEn) .
As part of the continuing evolution of recognizing academic nursing education as a specialty, plans are in progress to develop a certification to recognize the expertise of academic nurse educators teaching in Practical Nursing (PN) or Vocational
Nursing (VN) programs. Stay tuned to future Certification Sentinel’s for details.
Lastly, just a quick reminder that the deadline to renew your certification is October 1 if you are due to renew this year. Use the Certelligence system to log your renewal activities. The system is easy to use. One suggestion to make the renewal process easier is to collect and organize data demonstrating your renewal activities and have this information available as you enter your data into the Certelligence system.
Brenda Morris, EdD, RN, CNE
Chair, Certification Board of Commissioners
Ah, it is the end of summer and the beginning of new school terms. Here in Florida, the schools opened today, which, of course, meant lots more traffic, including school buses. And the drop off in tourism will be felt.
The Practical/Vocational Nurse practice analysis is finished and a test plan has been created based on the analysis. The next step will be test item writing. We already have 30 item writers signed up so this will be a massive effort. We need to create an entirely new test bank for PN/VN test items…up to 300 items. Our hope is that we can pilot the new exam by the 2025 NLN Education Summit.
The Certification Star Awards Committee has picked the 2024 winners…one for individual excellence and one for program excellence. They will be announced and presented at the Certification Reception at the NLN Education Summit in San Antonio in September.
The Board of Commissioners has appointed a new Public Member of the Board: Yuliya Grassby. Yuliya works in the Regulatory Department at the University of Phoenix. She originally was from Ukraine. We welcome Yuliya to our journey. Mark Everett, our previous Public Member, resigned this year due to his workload at his employment. Mark was a valuable member of the Board for six years and we are very grateful for his service. We wish him the best!
As already mentioned, the NLN Summit will be in San Antonio, Texas, September 18-20. We think there will be high turnout this year. I will be giving a Pre-Summit Workshop on understanding and using the competencies in nurse educator practice on September 18 and an update on Certification Department activities on September 19. I always discuss how to renew your certification if it is due. You should keep in mind that 2024 Renewal Applications are due by October 1.
Pass Rates for 2024 YTD
CNEn: 84%
Dr. Larry Simmons
Senior Director of Credentialing
Interview with Legacy Award Recipient Dr. Sharron Schlosser
By Erin Killingsworth, PhD, RN, CNE
Dr. Sharron Schlosser, PhD, RN, CNE, COI, ANEF has more than 45 years of experience in nursing education and has taught at all levels of professional nursing from associate to DNP. She is now retired and professor emerita at the Moffett and Sanders School of Nursing, Samford University, in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Schlosser earned a diploma in nursing from the Birmingham Baptist Hospitals School of Nursing, the BSN from The University of Alabama, and the MSN and PhD degrees from The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her post-doctoral work was in transcultural nursing where she studied with Dr. Madeleine Leininger at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan and Dr. Fran Wenger at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She was a member of the 2005 inaugural class of Certified Nurse Educators (CNE) and was inducted as a fellow in the Academy of Nursing Education in 2015. Dr. Schlosser was awarded the Legacy Award in 2023.What sparked your interest in becoming a nurse educator?
That was never really on my radar screen. I was working on my undergraduate degree. I finished the diploma program, so I still had to go back and earn the college degree. I was engaged. I was holding down a clinical job. So you know, my plate was full, and I wasn't really looking to change jobs. I had a former faculty member approach me in the hospital one day and say, “Sharron, I need someone to help me with clinicals this summer with the OB courses in the program. Would you be interested in helping me with that?” And I didn't even give her an immediate yes, because that was something very different from clinical, and I loved clinical. I loved contact with the patients. That was a part of why I went into nursing. And I began to think about it, and remembered back to when I was a child and I vacillated between, “Are you going be a nurse, or are you going be a teacher?” And so I thought, “Lord, are you trying to lead me into something new?” So I went back to her and talked to her about what she wanted, and if she thought that I could really do it. And I said yes. After getting into teaching for that one summer term in the OB clinical course, as the old saying goes, the rest is history. I discovered that education was what I loved. I saw something there that I had not really thought about before, which was the opportunity to influence other students as well as maintain my patient contact. I had always been complimented by my patients for my care. I enjoyed working with students when we had students on the clinical units but teaching that was something for somebody that had a whole lot more going for them than this girl. And you know, when I finished my undergraduate degree, at that time you could teach with a BSN degree, I took on my first full-time teaching position with the School of Nursing at my Alma Mater, and it was still a diploma program. So that's how I got into it.
What are some of the challenges you have faced as a nurse educator?
I think the biggest one overall is how to maintain that work/life balance. Because when you are committed to your work, nursing education is something that is constantly changing. You have to be willing to move with change. There's always something new. There's always something better which necessitates a lot of outside work in addition to just your teaching. I think balance and the need for constant change were the biggest challenges.
Now, when you get down to really looking at specifics, I think the most difficult thing I had to do in the beginning was to assign a failing grade. I always want everybody to succeed. Life just doesn't happen that way. And so to tell a student
that their work was not good enough to pass the course and move on was probably one of the most difficult things that I ever had to do. It was something I had to do all the way through. I had students in the doctoral program that were not
successful. I try to always preface those meetings with something positive. I want them to see that this failure is not the end of the world. You've done this, this and this, but unfortunately you didn't meet the standards. I don't remember
who it was, but I had someone to help me to understand that I didn't fail a student. A student fails himself or herself. I assign the grade based upon the quality of the work and I'm there to work with them in every way that I can. But the
work that they turn in is the work on which they are graded. And that was something that I always tried to help my nurse educator students to see - that you're not a failure when the student fails. I had some that said, “You know, but
I didn't do my job if they weren't successful”. That's not always the case. Because I know that multiple times, I had students to fail a course twice and drop out. They would come back. They would retake the course, and they would go
on and pass NCLEX the first time. So I often try to share this to prevent others from going through the same experiences that I have. That was not easy.
What are some of the biggest changes you have seen in nursing education over your tenure as a nurse educator?
I think that it's just the nature of nursing education where we have shifted from diploma programs to undergraduate programs being in institutions of higher learning. When I entered nursing school there were only 2 BSN programs in the state of Alabama. Now many major universities in the state have a BSN program, and we're still getting new ones. Diploma programs were less expensive than a four-year college degree. I received a scholarship that covered tuition, room, and board for 3 years of nursing school compared to 4 years of college. To me, the little country girl that was coming to town, that was a no brainer. I didn't see any way to pay for college. I knew when I started the diploma program I would one day have an undergraduate degree. That was my goal. It was like that for a lot of people who do our associate degree programs. It's a way to get that nursing education; move into nursing and then pursue your undergraduate degree. So I think that that is one of the big things.
When we talk about just the nature and the changes in nursing education another one is the proliferation of master's programs and doctoral programs. The shift from people earning doctorates in other disciplines as opposed to limited doctorates in nursing. Those are the biggest changes in nursing education, and they're all for the better. They have advanced nursing. Before when people went on to get their doctoral degrees, they had to do it in other disciplines. They did an EdD in education, or they did a PhD in biochemistry, or pathophysiology, or administration, or something like that. Those were the early doctorates, because we didn't have nursing doctorates. When I made the decision to pursue my doctoral degree it was a DSN, Doctor of Science in Nursing. At the time, and it was one of the few, if any, others, with that degree. The closest two doctoral programs that you had to go to before the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) opened theirs was Catholic University in Washington, DC, or the University of Texas in Austin. So, when we had one at UAB that made the difference for a lot of people in Alabama to earn a doctoral degree in nursing rather than have to go into another discipline. So it's the nature and the changes in just nursing education that are the biggest changes that have occurred. And then, as we look at that, it's the difference in the role, from the handmaid to the doctor to that independent role of the nurse.
What do you consider are your greatest accomplishments during your tenure as a nurse educator?
I think that the biggest accomplishment is to see my former students, my graduates, go out and accomplish things on their own. Nothing is more rewarding to me than to have a student contact me and say, “Dr. Schlosser, guess what? I just
was promoted to full professor”, or to say, “I've earned Associate Professor”, or “I was successful on the CNE exam”, or “I've accepted a position as director of this nursing program”, or “I've
been elected to the Board for the NLN”, or “I'm doing this with the American Nurses Association”. I think those are the accomplishments that mean the most to me.
Yes, I was in the inaugural class of the CNE. Yes, that was very important to me. One reason it was important to me was that I had advocated for acknowledgement and a credential that would recognize that role for a long time. The Southern Regional Educational Board, if you go back to the history, did some work, but did not pursue it. It was the NLN who took some of their work and were able to move on to advance the CNE credential. But here I was teaching educator students in a master’s program, and getting ready for a DNP program and if I was going to teach them, I needed the credential to show that I was qualified for it.
So that, and then, going on and being elected a fellow in the Academy of Nursing Education, the awards from my Alma Mater, those are important, but they don't mean anything to me like seeing my graduates succeed. That means that what I've done will continue to live on long after anything that I did individually.
What are some "words of wisdom" you have for other nurse educators?
It's next to impossible to come down to one. I think that you have to not be afraid to say, “I don't know, but we will find out”. That's been one thing that I noticed with my educator students and their fears of, “What if I don't
know the answer to a question?”. Well, we all encounter that. No one knows the answer to every question. And we may have known it 5 years ago, but things may have changed, and we may not know today. So you have to say, “I don't
know but we will find out”. And that's a way you are role modeling with your students for how they can handle similar situations.
Also, you have to not be afraid to follow your dream to try something new. If you don't, you never will, but if you do, you may find that you love it. That may be the opening to a whole new chapter for your life. It's not going to be easy all the time. There's going to be lots of challenges along the way. There will be challenges day in, day out. You may not get every promotion that you have applied for, or you may not get every grant that you apply for. You have to be willing to hang in and try again. Just because something is rejected the first time, like your first manuscript, don't quit with that. Don't feel like that's a failure. Use it as a learning opportunity, and people will be there to work with you if you step up and ask for help. You have to not be afraid to say, “What do I do in this situation?” to someone who has a lot more experience. And there's nothing wrong with getting multiple answers because people handle situations differently. The way I would handle something may not feel right for you. So, you have to find something that feels right for you. So don't be afraid to get multiple ideas. That's a way of never stopping to learn. Continuing education is a part of life. We never need to give up on learning, and we never need to stop caring. We need to care about our students as well as our patients and our clients for whom we provide care. There is a quote in Ida V Moffett's book, The Courage to Care, “Care is the shining thread of gold that holds together the tapestry of life”. To me that's the epitome of nursing and nursing education. We can't quit caring. And as nurse educators, you impact the life of your students and patients, and every patient that they ever care for down the road.
Building General Artificial Intelligence Literacy: Empowering Safe, Responsible Use Among Nurse Educators
By M. Margaret Calacci MS, RN, CHSE, CNE, and Brenda Morris, EdD, MS, RN, CNE
The release of Chat GPT and other emerging generative artificial intelligence (GAI) technology tools in the spring of 2023 raised important questions about the ethical use of these tools by educators and students (Chan, 2023). GAI is a broad term that refers to a type of artificial intelligence (AI) application that is a simulation of human intelligence using machine learning to create algorithms that enable machines to learn from data, adapt to new inputs, and perform tasks with varying degrees of autonomy (Mishra et al., 2023). These tools, when prompted, perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence to create new content from user input resulting in text, images, video, music, artwork, or synthetic data. As GAI's role rapidly evolves, educators and learners must lead policy development to address academic integrity, transparency, and skill acquisition. According to Chan (2023) empowering the responsible use of these tools in education can promote student accountability, preserve institutional integrity, and facilitate digital trust with technology at the highest standards of academic honesty.
In practice settings, the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights (2022) supports balancing responsible use with the undeniable benefits of attending to crucial aspects of the complexity of GAI with integrity, rigor, and transparency while maintaining the nurse’s decision-making, clinical judgment, critical thinking, or assessment skills to improve patient outcomes. Alignment with the AACN (2021) Essentials Domain 8: Informatics and Healthcare Technologies Nurse educators shall foster a robust, ethical learning environment to understand the technical competencies that will drive future innovative care.
As nurse educators, we are charged with preparing practice-ready graduates equipped with 21st-century capacities who ethically apply technology such as GAI in their practice. Thus, the question becomes, “How do we prepare graduates to demonstrate these competencies?”
The first step in developing GAI literacy in learners includes personalized adaptive competency-based distributed learning as a tutor, thought partner, or researcher assistant decreasing cognitive load and increasing deep learning (Kelter, R., Stewart, T., & Zamis, L. (2019). Each learning activity may have unique needs. Instructors must provide transparent information in their syllabi and, when appropriate, assignment instructions about expected student usage of GAI tools and how this aligns with course goals and values. Additionally, instructors should role model transparency in their work by indicating when and how GAI was used in developing course materials. Lastly, instructors demonstrate to students how to transparently cite GAI in their work.
Nurse educators may ask how they can create “AI proof” assignments, meaning that the risk of students misusing AI to complete the assignment is minimized. Well-designed assessments can build student confidence in their ability to complete coursework and make it more difficult for students to cheat. Iterative assessments, scaffolded with other assignments, require logic and justification, include factual data, are specific to the individual, include a peer review, include group work, are randomized or varied, or include discussions or presentations, can significantly decrease the likelihood of cheating (Chan, 2023). This dynamic environment requires flexible and creative educators to model best practices for the ethical use of new technology supporting our learners into the future.
References:
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). 2021. The essentials: Core Competencies for professional nursing education. https://www.aacnnursing.org/essentials/tool-kit/domains-concepts/informatics-and-healthcare-technologies
American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights. (2022). The ethical use of Artificial intelligence in nursing practice. https://www.nursingworld.org/~48f653/globalassets/practiceandpolicy/nursing-excellenc e/ana-position-statements/the-ethical-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-nursing-practice_bod-approved-12_20_22.pdf
Chan, C. K. Y. (2023). Is AI changing the rules of academic misconduct? An in-depth look at students’ perceptions of “AI-giarism” (arXiv:2306.03358). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.03358
Kelter, R., Stewart, T., & Zamis, L. (2019). NPD quick guide series, educational design process: Brain-based learning. Association for Nursing Professional Development
Mishra, P, Warr, M, & Islam, R. (2023): TPACK in the age of ChatGPT and Generative AI. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education. DOI: 10.1080/21532974.2023.2247480