Teaching community and public health nursing means helping students connect complex concepts with the realities of the populations and communities they will eventually serve. Finding creative ways to make those connections can be challenging—and many educators have developed effective strategies that are worth sharing with colleagues.
The Association of Community Health Nursing Educators (ACHNE) Innovative Teaching Strategies (ITS) repository provides an opportunity to do just that. The peer-reviewed, open-access collection features teaching strategies developed by community and public health nursing educators and offers ideas that can be adapted for undergraduate, graduate, and RN-to-BSN courses.
FEATURED TEACHING STRATEGY
Integrating a Writing-Intensive Assignment in the Community and Public Health Classroom
Olivia Croskey, DNP, ARNP, NP-C, CNL, and Melissa Lehan Mackin, PhD, RN (2024)
A closer look
SDOH • Writing • Peer Feedback • Faculty Support
Writing assignments can be an effective way for students to explore public health issues in depth, but the process can also feel overwhelming. This strategy breaks the writing process into manageable steps while providing support throughout the assignment.
Students explore a public health issue through the lens of the social determinants of health (SDOH) while working through clearly defined objectives and authentic assessments. Peer feedback, ongoing student-instructor dialogue, and targeted faculty support are incorporated throughout the process.
The result is more than a final paper. Students have multiple opportunities to engage with the content, receive feedback, refine their thinking, and develop scholarly writing skills while applying community and public health concepts to a real-world issue.
What Can We Learn From One Another?
The writing-intensive assignment is just one example of the innovative approaches being used by community and public health nursing educators. Across classrooms and practice settings, faculty are finding creative ways to use simulation, field experiences, case studies, technology, active learning, and other strategies to help students apply public health concepts.
But innovative teaching ideas don’t have to originate in the classroom.
Some of the best ideas may already be happening in practice.
Community and public health nurses working in health departments, community organizations, schools, healthcare systems, and other settings are using creative approaches every day to address the needs of individuals, families, populations, and communities. These real-world experiences can provide powerful opportunities for students to learn.
From Practice to the Classroom
This creates an exciting opportunity for CPHNO and ACHNE members to partner.
A CPHNO member may have developed a creative community outreach program, implemented a unique population-health intervention, created an innovative approach to health education, or developed a new way to engage community partners. Perhaps a practice setting has found an effective way to use data, address health inequities, respond to a community need, or prepare for a public health emergency.
Could that practice experience become a learning opportunity for students?
Working together, a CPHNO member and an ACHNE member can transform an innovative practice experience into a teaching strategy that can be shared with educators and adapted for use with students.
This type of collaboration creates a valuable bridge between practice and education—bringing authentic community and public health experiences into the classroom while giving students opportunities to apply what they are learning to real-world situations.
What Makes a Great Submission?
Innovative teaching strategies can address a wide range of topics and learners. Submissions are welcome across undergraduate, graduate, and RN-to-BSN education, with particular interest in strategies aligned with current public health competencies and the AACN Essentials.
A strategy doesn’t have to be complicated or involve the latest technology. Sometimes the most valuable ideas are the ones that solve a familiar teaching or practice challenge in a thoughtful and creative way.
The ACHNE ITS repository was created by members, for members to make these ideas accessible to educators looking for new approaches to teaching. Contributing also provides an opportunity to transform a successful classroom or practice-based strategy into a peer-reviewed scholarly work that can be included on a CV or considered as part of annual review and promotion and tenure activities.
Explore. Adapt. Share.
Whether you are looking for a new idea for your next class, have a teaching strategy you’ve been using for years, or are a CPHNO member with a practice innovation that could become a student learning experience, the ACHNE Innovative Teaching Strategies repository is an opportunity to learn from colleagues and contribute to the collective knowledge of community and public health nursing education.
Explore the strategies. Adapt an idea for your learners. Partner with a colleague. And when you have a strategy of your own, consider sharing it with the community.
Visit ACHNE.org/innovative-teaching-strategies to explore the repository and learn more about submitting an innovative teaching strategy.
