Digital Recording in Skills Lab Helps Nursing Students Learn

According to a study, using a digital recording as a learning and teaching method improves learning in a skills laboratory.

Ingebjørg Strand and colleagues studied how nursing students think about, react to and learn from the digital recording. The assessment was done on first-year level students and over two semesters. Students were required to fill an online questionnaire. There were also five written questions after each practical skill sessions.

The study, explored by nursing writing services, found that students reported digital recording affected factors like feeling secure, confident, and safe. Additionally, they reported that the training and learning of practical skills required video recording for efficient learning.Cameras proved to be a good tool for peer learning since video recording improved reflection, psychomotor performance, self-assessment, sensing and discovery learning. The authors of the study said that offer immediate and direct feedback on performance from practical procedures and aid in theory – practice transition. Students had more self-confidence and felt safer in performance.

Using digital recording as a learning and teaching method has many advantages. Digital recording enhances listening skill and can be kept for long as it doesn’t get corrupted. Also, someone can easily track some part that he/she didn’t understand well and can be repeated as many time as possible. With digital recording, listening and following become comfortable. When such digital records are used by nursing students in the skills lab, understanding is faster due to the quality of sound.

The study showed that using digital recording improved students learning and performance. Students will also enjoy learning as they feel secure and confident. The findings from the study contributed to the understanding that digital recording becomes the needs and is crucial in learning to improve performance. Recent developments in software and hardware have made digital recording more accessible to different learning institutions. For instance, anyone with a smartphone can record a high-quality video such as when a lecturer record while experimenting. These recording can then be shared with students in the labs. For educators, the development of media-based practice can transform how students learn and how instructors teach.

Why use digital recording in learning?

When used correctly, digital recording can improve the teaching and learning process in many ways. Here are some of the benefits of using a digital recording.

Increase student engagement

When students work using a digital recording, they feel a sense of empowerment. They can follow up the recordings at any speed they want. There are no interruptions such as when asking the instructor to repeat sections that the student didn’t understand.  Also, digital media offer an immersive experience like virtual reality in better ways than text and oral learning.  Using digital media simulates real-world scenarios which give students conceptualized experience. This is a foundational principle that supports learning.

Help students in difficult concepts

Sometimes, explaining some concepts cannot be done without showing. These need to be demonstrated in other ways apart from numeric and linguistic representations. Digital recording help instructors to demonstrate rather than to tell. If students take part in making the recording, the digital tools used can help students express concepts with multimodal representations. This ability to represent complex ideas with multi-modal representations is a valuable skill.

Promote critical awareness

The text has always been the dominant method of scholarly communication. However, there is an increasing number of scholars using other methods to share their ideas and students should be able to understand what it is presented critically. They also need to interpret the meaning of different forms. Nowadays most people use digital media to communicate their message outside higher education. They usually do so in uncritical ways. When digital media is used in a classroom, students get used to these practices within context since they emphasize critical perspective.

Additional benefits

Foster equity: When students study using digital technology, they get a chance to improve their digital skills that otherwise they could not have been able to practice. Digital devices allow students to participate in course content the way they like. For instance, when a student is unable to attend a lab, recorded lectures give the student an alternative method of learning.

Distance learning is made possible: Sometimes the instructor might not be able to attend laboratory classes, and learning can continue with the digital media.

Revision is made easy: During intense revision time, students can revisit a digital recording and catch up on some lectures. They can quickly catch with the content they are looking for without a lot of struggle.

Different learning methods: Different students prefer learning in a variety of ways and different paces. This gives them control and flexibility to view lectures in their time. This means that those students who find it hard to learn from lectures are presented with an alternative method to suit their learning approach.

Help in mastering the course: Sometimes, video can be just as good as instructors in showing procedures to help in learning where students can view complicated clinical procedures as they want.

Engaging and inspiring students

Studies have shown that digital video can engage and inspire students through:

• Enhanced learning experience
• Higher marks
• Increased student motivation
• Improved communication and working skills
• Learning resources for future use

These studies have shown that nursing students can improve their performance with digital recording. This shows that digital recording should be used in higher education to boost the performance of students. Many students would prefer to feel safe and secure when studying. When students feel safe when studying, they improve and learn efficiently.