Since this is foundational information, lecture will be the most basic way to convey this

information for the first class; the second class will involve simulation. Lectures are seen by

some as an outdated teaching technique, in which the instructor drones on in front of students; in

fact, undergraduate students attending traditional lectures are 1.5 times more likely to fail their

course than those whose instructors do not use the traditional lecture method (Bajak, 2014).

Therefore, copious visual aids will be used, including sample fetal heart monitoring tracings.

Research by Chavan, Chavan, Giri & Jogdand (2014) found that a majority of students preferred

lectures to be accompanied by audiovisual aids. I plan to make the lecture as exciting as possible

by keeping the focus on the invisible patient behind each tracing. The use of humor during

lecture will also help to increase student engagement in the classroom and enhance memory

formation (McNeely, 2017).

We will review basic definitions and patterns, and then practice them with the practice

strips by framing them in case studies of patients. The practice tracings will be visual and

learners will actively synthesize the course material while analyzing them. The use of case

studies as a teaching tool has been shown to increase student engagement and increase

performance on learning assessments, with students reporting case studies as a valuable learning

tool (Bonney, 2015).

I hope to reach all learners with the strategies used between the initial lesson on the first

classroom day, and the simulation exercise on the second day. Students will have time to review

and absorb information on their own via the practice exercises, so those who need more time will

have resources at their disposal to review. Those who learn by listening and taking notes will be

able to do so in lecture, whereas visual learners will have many strips to observe, and those who

learn by doing will be able to interpret the tracings in the first class and both interpret and
intervene during the role-playing exercise in the second class. Popular mnemonics and

memorization tricks as well as visual aids will be discussed. The only barrier to using these

teaching methods is the need to aggregate NCLEX questions for the quiz and fetal monitoring

strips for the case studies. The delivery system of these materials is a simple projector.

A primary goal of this module is to engage learners beyond surface, or survivalist

learning, in which students just want to pass the course, and into deep learning, in which the

learner reflects on how the material may be applied in real life and truly integrates the

information (Baines, 2004). Participation in the role-playing review exercise is valuable for

deep engagement by simulating the fast-paced, stressful environment of labor nursing and

teaching students about their own ability to perform under pressure. Additionally, simulation

exercises such as the role-playing games scheduled for the second classroom day allow students

to reflect on their own learning as well as provide deeper insight for the instructor (Mawhirter &

Garofalo, 2016).