Nursing Professor Uses Technology to Prove Distance Is Not an Issue

Christine Colella, director of the Nurse Practitioner Program in UC’s College of Nursing, isn’t new to teaching online. She has worked at the University of Cincinnati since 1995, and has taught online since 2009.

As an associate professor in clinical nursing, some people may think her students would need a real-world learning environment, not a virtual one. But Colella embraces the challenge and gives her students the full experience without ever being face to face.

“One thing I always want to make sure is the student in front of me gets the same information as the student not in front of me,” Colella said. 

She was recently awarded UC’s Innovative Uses of Technology in Teaching Award because she created an interactive learning module for her online Differential Diagnosis course. In this class, nurse practitioner students study patient interactions and diagnosis.

In a real-world setting, students work with “standardized patients,” who are paid actors, to practice their skills. The students talk with the patients, ask questions and then diagnose the problem.  

“How am I going to give distance learning students this experience?” Colella asked herself before starting the course. 

She worked with college IT staff and instructional designers to create an interactive case study, where she recorded her interactions with standardized patients and put it online for students to view. The camera was set so the students saw the interactions from the clinician’s perspective. 

“I wanted the student to feel like they are in the room.” 

Throughout the case study, students thought of their own questions to ask the patients and came up with their own diagnoses. At the end of the case study, students could click on the questions Colella asked to learn why she asked them.

Colella was awarded a $900,000 grant from Advanced Nursing Education Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to make 15 more medical education interactive modules. 

“We hope someday that this will be marketable,” she said.

Students responded positively to the interactive case study. “This was the best hands-on experience since I’ve been in this program,” Colella remembers a student writing in a review of the online course.  

“We need to remember that the learning is the same,” Colella said about online learning vs. face to face. “What’s different is how the students absorb that information, whether it’s in person or online.”