UCBA Professor Incorporates Multi-Touch Book, Video Components for Classes

Jen Ellis is no stranger to eLearning initiatives. In fact, she has championed learning via faculty-created videos covering skills like IV insertion for four years.

Now, Ellis, a nursing professor at UC’s Blue Ash campus, is looking to expand on the e-learning resources available to her students by creating a multi-touch e-book designed to cut down on student cost while providing the most accurate and up-to-date information.

This book has been a long time coming. Ellis began offering instructional, faculty-created videos as a way to keep skill instruction reviewable on devices outside of the teaching environment, as well as free to students.

Beginning last summer, the Blue Ash nursing program received its first cohort of students with iPad requirements. This, says Ellis, gave her more of an opportunity to further integrate technology. She made a series of mini books using her lecture material and made them available to her students, who could use the information free of charge and review it electronically outside the classroom.

“We need to prepare our students for the nursing profession. It’s complex, it’s ever-changing, and it’s a rigorous profession that involves technology at every level. We need to get them comfortable now in order to make them successful in the long run. It’s not just making them successful for them, it’s making them successful for patients,” she says.

Now, thanks to several years’ worth of e-learning content and positive student feedback, Ellis is implementing an e-book designed to provide first year students in the one-credit course “Success in Nursing” with a text that fits the profession and, most importantly, the program. This e-book will be free for all students. 

“No book that’s published nationally is going to talk about what our university has to offer, so this is a way I can put those resources in a book for our students,” says Ellis.

These resources include information about some of UC’s services like the Writing Center and Math and Science Support Center, in addition to nursing-specific content like effective time management, organization, note-taking and professionalism.

Ellis also sees the book as a dynamic resource, which she can update and change as new information becomes available and as students advance within the program. 

“The resources are designed to be what we expect of our students. It’s really exciting for me to be able to provide that,” she says.