Professor’s Notebook: Wrapping Up your Semester of Teaching

The end of term is a busy time that often involves a lot of final assessment activities for the courses you are teaching. It can be challenging to go the extra distance to make sure that you stay organized during the transition from one semester to the next. Today I’m going to share with you what I consider the “must-dos” to close out your semester, stay organized, and learn and grow as a teacher.

1. Submit your final grades on time

This should be low-hanging fruit but you’d be surprised how many faculty members either do not keep track of the deadlines for grade submission or struggle to get all of their grading done on time (especially with final papers/essays). You need to know your institution’s policy and dates for submitting final grades. It is very helpful to add the relevant dates for each course you teach to your calendar and plan your assignments and exams in a way that gives you enough time to grade them and submit the final grades on time.

As an aside, we usually underestimate how much time it takes to grade assignments so it can also be helpful to do some time tracking when you grade so that you have a more realistic estimate of the time you will need to block off in your calendar for this. Time tracking is simply keeping track of the amount of time you spend doing things and can be as basic as writing it on a piece of paper or in a Word document. Even timing grading a random sample of papers can give you a decent estimate of your average grading time for that assignment.

Obviously, it will vary by course, level, quality of writing, etc. but moving forward, this information can help you make informed decisions about the assignments you develop for your courses. There is also the whole AI thing which means we could be (some are) moving away from more traditional scholarly papers or essays or that we need to allocate more time to grading smaller scaffolded assignments throughout the term. We may (probably) also need more time to deal with AI cheating issues for some types of assignments. Even so, you need to get your grades in on time and make a plan that allows you to do that.

2. Clean up and organize your teaching files

You should have a personal filing system that makes it easy for you to find information. Personally, I have a main folder called TEACHING with a subfolder for each of the different courses I’ve taught and another level of subfolders by year for the courses that I have taught multiple times. You might prefer to organize by year. There isn’t one best way to organize your files but you do need a system that is consistent and works for you.

When it comes to teaching, there are basically three types of files: 1) content that you’ve created for teaching and learning, 2) content that others have created that you are using for teaching and learning while minding copyright laws (e.g., book chapters, journal articles, etc.), and 3) content that your students have created during the course (e.g., assignments, discussion posts, exams, etc.).

In my view, the student-created content and your evaluations of it require the most consideration due to privacy concerns and the potential for grade appeals. As a general rule, I would recommend finding out how long you are required to keep student work at your institution and then deleting the student work once that time has passed. For example, if you need to keep it for 1 year, then at the end of this term you would delete/electronically shred all student work from the Winter 2023 term. This includes discussion posts in your LMS.

The exception to this would be excellent work that you would like to use for accreditation/program review purposes or as examples to share with future classes. If you would like to save specific pieces of work from students for these purposes, you should ask them for permission to save and share their work in those ways now and file it in a special folder. The best time to ask students is now after you’ve just taught them (and after submitting final grades). Generally, I would ask for this permission via email and then if the student replies giving their written permission, I save the email thread as a PDF in the folder with their assignment.

The other types of files that you have (created by you and resources created by others) can be kept indefinitely in your personal filing system. I like to have folders organized by class or by week of the course and then a separate folder for assignments. I also create a brand new folder for each time I teach the same course. While this does create some duplication, it means that I have an archived version of the course for each time I taught it. Note that I always update and revise my courses to improve them so no two offerings are identical.

3. Read your student teaching evaluations

It might not be your favourite thing to do, but you really do need to read your student evaluations. Yes, there are known problems with student teaching evaluations – most students are not experts in teaching and learning, people have personal biases that negatively affect their ratings of women and members of minority groups who are professors, hard classes/subjects are viewed less favourably than others, and students with strong extreme opinions are most likely to complete the evaluation – however, there can still be helpful nuggets that can help you improve as a teacher so I wouldn’t advise ignoring them or sticking your head in the sand.

I would advise you not to take the feedback personally and to approach your teaching evaluations like a researcher instead. This is data after all. Print out your evaluations and go through them with different coloured highlighters. First, highlight all of the positive feedback in one colour. Then, highlight the negative feedback in another colour. I would ignore comments that are irrelevant to teaching (for example, comments about your appearance which yes, does happen when you are a woman). Look for common themes in each category. Are students consistently saying they didn’t like the textbook? Is there a 50:50 split on loving and hating an active learning strategy that you used? What is the data telling you overall? Write a brief summary of the overall feedback and consider what you might do differently next time to improve your teaching and students’ learning. You might also want to talk to your teaching support center or colleagues, do some research about the scholarship of teaching, or attend a teaching professor conference. Excellence does not require perfection, but it does require effort and there is always more to learn.

4. Take a day off (at least)

Lastly, it’s important to take at least a day off and decompress after a busy few weeks. Go do things that you enjoy and let go of the stresses of the semester. If you can take a vacation (at least a full week) I would highly encourage you to. Sometimes it feels like there is never a good time to take one but it is super important for your health and wellbeing, and, perhaps counterintuitively, taking vacation benefits your productivity at work long-term. Burnt-out people are not productive people so let’s avoid going down the burnout path 😉

And that’s it for today. Go wrap up your teaching semester and enjoy a well-deserved break~!

On Liberal Arts Education

Worker shortages across industries are creating intense pressures to create shortcuts to educate people to fill in the holes in the roster as fast as possible. We need tradespeople, we need nurses, teachers, doctors, and the list goes on… Yes, we definitely need more people in the workforce. But, we need the right people and we need them to know what they are doing (and also, to have the insight to know what they do not know and need to learn).

The trend to shorten education programs and view them as a type of factory that produces workers for the system leads to devaluing learning that is not directly linked to on-the-job tasks and skills that are visible and obvious to non-experts outside the field. For example, as a nurse, it is absolutely essential to understand ideas beyond the knowledge and skills necessary to do medical procedures like giving medications, inserting IVs, and so forth. Understanding the human condition, the determinants of health, the structure, history, and politics of the health care system, and the ethical aspects of care are also very important.

Teachers also need to have a broad understanding of the world, civic engagement, human development, social and political issues, science, arts, history, technology, and more, along with developing their skills and knowledge specific to teaching including curriculum and lesson planning, teaching, evaluation, and classroom management. It takes time to learn all of that.

Arguably, the purpose of education is not just to provide graduates with a career (though, yes, this is important too), but also to develop their critical thinking abilities, introduce them to new ideas, inspire them to think differently, and learn more about themselves and the broader world. Liberal arts education especially provides students with the opportunity to do this because it requires students to take a variety of courses across different disciplines and prepares them to be engaged and thoughtful citizens.

As a student, I didn’t really understand what liberal arts education was or why it was important, but in retrospect, I think it has been instrumental in my personal and professional development. For example, the English courses I took early on were challenging and required me to become a critical reader and thinker, as well as further develop my writing skills. These skills were incredible assets as a kinesiology and nursing student, as well as in my career as a professor. I also learned about different ways to think about and understand the world that I had not been exposed to growing up in smalltown rural Nova Scotia.

Even as a PhD student, my supervisor required me to take graduate courses outside of nursing. Instead of the minimum four courses, I took 10, including courses in instrument development in the Department of Psychology and courses in advanced statistics and teamwork at the Ivey School of Business. These courses introduced me to valuable new perspectives and new ideas outside of my home discipline which are still highly relevant to the work that I do now.

The benefits of liberal arts education and the perils of not exposing students to broader ideas and knowledge seem even more relevant today, with the pace of social and technological change. For example, it is readily apparent that we are not well-equipped to deal with the wide-ranging negative consequences of AI, many of which involve ethical and moral dilemmas. We are also living in a society that is increasingly influenced and polarized by the echo chambers of the internet and social media. Unfathomably, science (and education) is under attack and many people lack the knowledge and skills to critically appraise information and sources. Now, more than ever, we need to foster intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and philosophical conversations and debates about social and ethical issues. We need liberal arts education.

Academic Coaching for Student Success

In sports the role of a coach is obvious to most people: the coach’s job is to bring out the best in their players and team and win. In my books winning doesn’t just mean beating the other team on the scoreboard – it means doing your very best and holding nothing back. In the words of John Wooden, one of my favourite coaches of all time “Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”

The best coaches help people identify and set goals and develop a plan to achieve them. They provide specific, constructive feedback and help their coachees identify strategies to overcome roadblocks. Coaches can also make learning and practicing new skills interesting and fun, and therefore help people stay motivated to achieve their goals.

Coaching is also relevant to many other contexts outside of sport such as parenting, personal training, and career coaching. In higher education, academic coaching is becoming more prevalent in response to increased numbers of students who are unprepared for university. In my discipline of nursing, we also see clinical coaching emerging as an effective strategy to support students who need extra support to develop their competence in clinical practice.

So what exactly is academic coaching?

The Coaching in Higher Education Consortium defines academic coaching as “fostering individualized relationships with students that promote their agency, self-understanding, growth, effectiveness, and persistence within the realm of education and across their lifespan” (1).

Academic coaching services usually provide students with tailored, individual sessions with a skilled academic coach to identify goals, strengths, areas for improvement, and strategies for success. Collaborating with an academic coach can empower students to build and refine skills required for academic success including self-regulation, time management, notetaking, studying, test-taking strategies, and planning and writing academic papers.

It’s worth noting that many universities and colleges have dedicated academic coaches with expertise in academic coaching. Professors are not expected to be academic coaches, nor are academic advisors who focus on academic regulations and course/program planning. Alzen et al. (2) provide a nice diagram showing the differences between counseling, academic coaching, and student advising which you can find here.

That being said, in nursing, my experience has been that faculty members invest a tremendous amount of time and energy supporting the learning needs of students because we tend to be a passionate and caring bunch. Knowing many faculty members in other disciplines, I’m sure we’re not the only ones. However, as much as we care about our students, academic coaching adds another thing to our already very full plates and there is a power imbalance between students and professors that can make it difficult for students to share all of their needs and challenges. Dedicated academic coaches provide better support for students and free up professors’ valuable time and energy to focus on what they do best.

What does the evidence say about the effectiveness of academic coaching?

Overall, there is a need for more research but evidence to date suggests that academic coaching can be an effective approach to supporting university students. For example, in a 2021 study, Howlett et al. (3) found that students who participated in academic coaching experienced an increase in meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) and that online coaching was just as effective as in-person coaching (good news for our distance students!). In another recent study, Alzen et al. (2) found that an academic coaching intervention had positive impacts on GPA, credits earned, and student retention for first-year students in Arts and Sciences at risk of not continuing (GPA < 2.0). Not surprisingly, in this study students who completed the academic coaching program had better outcomes than those who did not. While there remains a need for more research, the preliminary evidence does support the use of academic coaching for student success.

The tricky part, as with any intervention, is to figure out what works best, for who, and in what conditions. It’s possible (and perhaps likely) that while struggling students stand to benefit the most from academic coaching, they may also be the least likely to seek it out or take advantage of it.

References

On Writing a Pandemic Impact Statement

Writing a pandemic impact statement can also be a valuable opportunity for you to reflect on how the pandemic has affected you and may be used as a tool to manage your expectations and priorities.

A major (and perhaps low fun) part of the tenure process is documenting all the wonderful, impactful things that you are doing.

Whether you are a new faculty member or have some experience under your belts, the pandemic has had an impact on both your career and your personal life – and you should document it, even if it’s just for your own personal records.

The purpose of a pandemic impact statement is to document, in a professional manner, the challenges and barriers caused by COVID-19 that have affected your work and productivity. In addition, it is an opportunity to document your resiliency and resourcefulness by highlighting what you were able to accomplish during this difficult time.

Writing a pandemic impact statement can also be a valuable opportunity for you to reflect on how the pandemic has affected you and may be used as a tool to manage your expectations and priorities. Lastly, you may be asked to submit a pandemic impact statement when you apply for grants or for tenure so having something ready to go will give you one less thing to do later!

Best Practices

I scoured the internet so you didn’t have to, searching for university resources and guidelines to help faculty write a pandemic impact statement. Most of these documents are very similar (reference list is provided at the end). They start out with a paragraph about the pandemic and that it happened (yes, we know), explains why you need to document the impact of it, recommends keeping it between 1-2 pages long, and provides lists of probing questions by category (teaching, research, etc.) that can help you remember and document all the ways in which the pandemic has impacted you as a faculty member. Since I am a nursing professor, I also noticed that most resources did not include anything about the impact on clinical teaching which has been a major challenge for faculty teaching in health professional programs.

Two resources stood out as being particularly helpful. They were from the ADVANCE program at UMass Amherst (1) which provides a template to get you started and the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at Purdue University (2) which includes a wide range of short exemplars that may or may not be relevant to you. Of note, it is not at all surprising to me that the most useful information came from academic leaders (who both happen to be women) working to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion for women and minority groups in academe.

(What) Should I share in my statement?

After reading all of these documents I still had a lot of questions about how to write my statement and I found myself carefully considering how much is actually necessary and safe to share with people who are evaluating me and my work.

This isn’t the first time I have wrestled with deciding how much is okay to share in formal assessment documents. My life hasn’t been easy. I worked multiple part-time jobs throughout university to pay for school and worked my butt off to earn scholarships. I started my PhD nine months pregnant with my son and have been a single parent throughout my doctoral and tenure track journey. My PhD supervisor died right after my graduation. I said goodbye to her in palliative care the night before I walked across the stage. How’s that for a way to start your tenure-track job? I cried a lot my first year as an Assistant Professor. Sometimes life is just hard.

I have been very open about all this but I have never felt that my personal life and the extra challenges I’ve faced were particularly relevant to my assessment documents or my ability to get tenure and be promoted. I guess I always thought that if I met the criteria anyway what does it matter if it was harder?

It seemed more risky to overshare, especially as a millenial (even though I have been working since I was 13 and am almost 40 now). I was afraid that my colleagues (who are mostly older than me) would think that I think I am a “special snowflake” that deserves or is asking for special treatment. Or worse, that I wouldn’t actually earn tenure on merit, but out of pity. In the end, I didn’t mention any of the things above when I submitted my file for probationary assessment. I got tenure early as an exceptional case and I know with my whole heart that I earned it. Perhaps if that hadn’t been the case I would regret not providing context about some of the extra challenges I’ve had to deal with. I will never know.

The pandemic has changed my view on this issue of sharing somewhat because it has forced some of the inequities in society and in academe to become more visible. The fact that many universities are requesting or inviting faculty to include a pandemic impact statement in the first place is an important signal that there is at least some awareness that the pandemic has affected people differently and should be taken in account when assessing employee job performance. However, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the tenure and promotion committee is still focused on assessing your performance, in your job, that they pay you to do.

I think the following statement from Harvard is particularly telling (bold emphasis mine):

In summary, this supplemental statement should describe any significant effects the pandemic had on your regular activities and plans, indicating ways that your focus or priorities may have necessarily shifted and articulating any deliberate choices you made to concentrate on specifically accessible opportunities and goals, given the constraints. It will not be necessary to explain why your work has been impacted (by describing specific childcare or health issues, e.g.), only to explain how (e.g., critical reduction in available working hours, inaccessible field site, loss of funding or unexpected new research expenses, etc.).

You’ll also be invited to highlight examples of innovation, training, additional mentoring or other service activities (e.g., clinical or first-responder service), new directions in research, or other unplanned but concrete accomplishments that came out of this period. A list of related resources is provided to assist you in reflecting on potential categories of impact and assessing extent (Harvard Office of Faculty Affairs, 2021).

While it may not be possible to completely separate the why and the how of the impact of COVID-19 on your work, I think it is best to keep things short and simple and focus on the how. I also really like the second point about highighting the good/new things that happened in response to the pandemic.

As an example, here is what I included in my pandemic impact statement about how my personal circumstances affected my work during the pandemic:

I am a long-time single parent of an elementary school-aged child with no caregiving support from family. School and daycare closures in March/April 2020 and Fall 2021 due to COVID-19 required me to work from home while parenting and supporting at-home learning for my son.

Out of two pages, this is the only part that mentions my personal circumstances and it is still focused on the how. The main point I am trying to get across here is that when it comes to caregiving for my son, I am it; I don’t have backup like so many of my colleagues. Point made. Aside from the infrequent times we’ve been trapped in the house, it hasn’t been all that different from pre-pandemic times. I still have to do all the housework, shopping, and caregiving. I am still the sole breadwinner. It’s impossible to find babysitters. Online conferences are more accessible but I miss in-person conferences which were often my only break from being a parent. Does the univeristy really care about that stuff? I’m not sure.

The rest of my pandemic impact statement is focused on how the pandemic has impacted each of my key roles: Research, Research Supervision, Teaching, Service, and Administration. That’s it.

So now what?

Go write your statement! Easy right?

If you want some help with this I made a workbook for you that can make it less painful and get it done in a single afternoon. As I mentioned earlier, I read pretty much every guide and resource I could find for faculty on how to write a pandemic/Covid-19 impact statement. None of them were quite what I needed so I made my own tool and I think you may find it helpful too.

Inside this workbook, I show you how to organize your statement, provide comprehensive checklists of possible impacts for teaching both classroom and experiential learning courses (like clinical, labs, practicums, etc.), research, and service so that you don’t forget anything (it’s been a long pandemic!), and provide examples of what to write in each part of your statement. I used this workbook myself so I know that it works and the checklists alone will save you loads of time!

If this sounds like something you’d find helpful, click here to check it out.

And that’s it for this week!

See you next Sunday (hopefully with your pandemic impact statement crossed off your to-do list!)

Emily

References:

(not formatted properly but here are the links; #sorrynotsorry)

Harvard Office of Faculty Affairs (2021). COVID-related resources for faculty. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty-affairs/faculty/covid-related-resources-for-faculty/

California State University (Long Beach): https://www.csulb.edu/academic-affairs/faculty-affairs/covid-19-professional-impact-statement

Clemson University: https://www.clemson.edu/provost/faculty-affairs/Documents/tpr_documents/facultycovidimpactstatement_document.pdf

Cleveland State University: https://www.csuohio.edu/sites/default/files/CSU%20Faculty%20COVID%20Impact%20Statement%20Guidelines%202021_0.pdf

Georgia State: https://faculty.gsu.edu/files/2021/02/COVID-Impact-StatementsV2.pdf

Michigan State University: https://hr.msu.edu/ua/promotion/faculty-academic-staff/documents/Memo-Guidelines-COVID-19-Impact-Statement-12-2-20.pdf

Michigan Tech: https://www.mtu.edu/advance/resources/covidimpact/

NC State University: https://provost.ncsu.edu/faculty-resources/faculty-evaluation-and-covid-19/

Purdue University: Best Practices Tools – Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence – Purdue University

University of California (Santa Barbara): https://ap.ucsb.edu/news.and.announcements/covid-19/2021-01-25_Guidance_for_COVID_Impact_Statement.pdf

University of Central Florida: https://facultyexcellence.ucf.edu/document/optional-covid-19-impact-statement/

University of Connecticut: https://provost.uconn.edu/covid-19/covid-impact-statements-guidance/

University of Florida: http://aa.ufl.edu/media/aaufledu/tenure-and-promotion/Guidance-for-faculty-impact-statement-final.pdf

University of Massachusetts: https://www.umass.edu/advance/documenting-pandemic-impacts-best-practices

University of Nebraska: https://journalism.unl.edu/pdf/COVID%20Impact%20Statements.pdf University of Nevada, Las Vegas: https://www.unlv.edu/hr/employee-info/covid-statement

University of Texas: https://cns.utexas.edu/faculty-affairs/faculty-evaluations/covid-impacts/covid-impact-statement

Non-cash ways to support your grad students

Before we get into this post, I want to highlight the importance of funding your graduate students if you can and as best you can! However, there are times when you may not have a lot of funding or enough to go around OR you just can’t pay your students enough to work for you. The latter happens in nursing most of the time – nursing grad students simply make more working as an RN than I could possibly afford to pay them as a research assistant.

Regardless of your cash flow situation, there are important benefits that you can (and should) provide to your graduate students aside from/over and above direct financial support.

Social capital.

Social capital refers to the resources embedded within and available from our relationships with other people (see my PhD dissertation for more info + references if you would like). Your grad students benefit tremendously from your professional network so make sure that you include them in projects, introduce them to your colleagues, and provide them with exposure to your network at conferences and other events.

Research training & mentorship.

The time and energy you invest in teaching and mentoring your grad students is incredibly valuable. Make sure that you have regular, dedicated time for each of your graduate students and that you provide them with the training they need to develop/enhance their knowledge and skills and be successful.

Experience.

A major part of the grad student journey is gaining experience – both in doing research and sharing it with others. Supporting students to submit abstracts, prepare presentations, and attend conferences can be a major benefit of working with you. Be strategic and pick national/international conferences that are happening close to you (or virtually) to limit the costs of attending – and cover registration if you can. Bonus points if you have a group of students attending together! Pre-covid I was able to support a group of students to go to a conference in Montreal and then to Halifax the following year. They really enjoyed having some social support at the event and it was something that we all looked forward to as a group. Highly recommended!

CV points.

Not to be overlooked, being able to add things to your CV is also important, particularly if you are pursuing an academic career. Your grad students should be given credit for their contributions to research publications and presentations. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen. One time I wrote an entire article and was gifted 4th author… another time I was a co-author on a paper with another grad student and her supervisor took all the credit! I could write a whole article just about this topic but the bottom line in my opinion is that credit should be given as earned, and only as earned. Having direct up-front conversations with grad students (and everyone involved) about authorship expectations and opportunities is super important.

So there you have it! There are lots of ways that you can support your grad students without giving them cold hard cash (though, if you can do that too, high five!).

Until next time!

Emily

Annual planning as an academic

As an academic, I think it’s important to understand the ebb and flow of your academic year in order to plan ahead and be strategic with how you invest your time and energy at different times of the year.

Hallelujah! 2020 is almost over forever. I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt like this year was 15 years long. I am done with it and ready to move on. Who’s with me?!

While January 1^st is not my first choice for the “start of the year”, it is an opportunity for a fresh start and a time when many of us reflect on the past year and think about what we want to accomplish in the year ahead.

In this post, I’m going to talk about the different “years” that we deal with in academia (and as a parent if that is applicable to you) and how you can use that information to strategically plan your year.

As an academic, I think it’s important to understand the ebb and flow of your academic year in order to plan ahead and be strategic with how you invest your time and energy.

There are multiple “years” that you need to be aware of: 1) the calendar year, 2) the employment year, 3) the academic year, and 4) your children’s academic year (if applicable).

1. The calendar year. January 1^st to December 31^st. This is the most obvious year but other than taxes, vacation time, and the normal calendar, it is not actually the schedule that we really live by in academia. That being said, the calendar year can sometimes be used to your advantage (or not) when it comes to publications, conference presentations, and research grants.

2. The (university) academic year. This is another year that we are very familiar with since we have spent most of our adult lives at the university in some capacity. In Canada the academic year runs from September of one calendar year until August of the following one. It is divided into Fall Term (Sept-Dec), Winter Term (Jan-Apr), and Summer Term (which includes multiple course timeframes between May-Aug). For me, the academic year is all about teaching responsibilities, graduate student progress, and administrative deadlines. Normally professors are required to teach during 2/3 of these semesters/terms, with one term to focus more on research. That looks great on paper but in real life, most research happens over the full year, not just over 4 months. However, knowing your teaching responsiblities does allow you to prioritize the most time-consuming aspects of your research when you have less/no teaching.

3. The employment year. Typically, this year is from July 1^st of one year to June 30^th of the following year. This is the “year” that counts towards probation, tenure, promotion, and years of service. Often you will be required to provide an updated CV or progress report by June 30^th every year to show what you have done in the last year. This year is also used to determine when you are eligible for sabbatical leave and your possible retirement dates.

The employment year is a bit awkward because it includes parts of two academic years: a) Academic Year 1: Tail end of summer term (July/August), and b) Academic Year 2: Fall term, Winter term, and first half of summer term (May/June). However, I still think it is the best year to use for planning as an academic.

If you are on the tenure track or pursuing promotion to full professor, you should absolutely print out a copy of your employment contract and write down the key dates related to submission of your applications for probationary review, tenure, and promotion. I also encourage you to go buy a sturdy 2-3′ binder and start creating your portfolio of evidence of meeting the criteria for tenure as you go. It is so much easier to do this as you go than waiting until the last minute!

4. Your kids’ academic year. If you have school-age children like I do, then you also deal with their academic calendar in your planning. In Canada, the school year runs from after labour day in September until the end of June. This year aligns almost perfectly with your employment year, minus the summer (July/August). Remember how the summer semester was supposed to have “extra” time for research? About that…

Seriously though, if you have kids, you need to find something for them to do when you are working in the summer and also plan for some family vacation time. If you are going to have students working for you in the summer you also need to consider how you are going to deal with that. Are you going to make them take vacation at the same time you do? Are there things that they can work on independently? Or maybe you have a post-doctoral fellow or senior graduate student who can step up and provide some leadership while you are on vacation?

Putting all these years together we get the following:

Note that I used the employment year as the base year for this because in my opinion it is the most important one as an academic employee. From this perspective, we are actually halfway through our “year” rather than at the beginning of it.

Planning Strategically for the next 6 months:

Make a list of the things that you must do in the next 6 months.
Is there anything that you can delegate, defer, or make easier? If yes, take action to make those things happen.
Schedule your remaining must dos into your calendar.
Make a list of the things that you want to do in the next 6 months.
Rank the items on your want list.
Schedule your want list by priority.

Example:

My MUST DO list for January-June 2021 looks like this:
1. Teach graduate course on healthy public policy & determinants of health (online, synchronous)
2. Teach undergraduate course on professional practice (online, asynchronous)
3. Oversee development of specialty nursing professional development certificate
4. Transition to Associate Dean role
5. Move to Moncton for new role (sell house, find new place to live, etc.)
6. Graduate student supervision (currently 4 students)
7. Co-lead of 1 major research project
8. Co-investigator on another major research project
9. Sign up kiddo for summer day camps
Is there anything that you can delegate, defer, or make easier? Not really lol…
Schedule your remaining must dos into your calendar. Many of my must do commitments have weekly times allocated to them. For teaching, I also make sure that I put all of the assignment and test dates into my calendar and block off time for marking and meeting with students afterwards. Selling my house and moving is going to take up a lot of time and energy so I am going to wait until I am done teaching in April before I start looking for a realtor and putting the gears into motion for that. I have the advantage of having a lot of experience moving which will help but it is still a lot of work! Day camp sign ups are usually in May/June so I will put a reminder in my calendar for that.
My WANT to do list for January-June 2021 looks like this:
1. Finish and submit 2 journal articles that I have been working on
2. Have a big BBQ party to say goodbye to our Fredericton friends (depending on COVID19)
3. Compete in a powerlifting competition
4. Lose 20lb
5. Plan a fun camping trip vacation
RANKED LIST:
1. Plan a fun camping trip vacation
2. Lose 20lb
3. Finish and submit 2 journal articles that I have been working on
4. Compete in a powerlifting competition
5. Have a big BBQ party to say goodbye to our Fredericton friends (depending on COVID19).
Schedule your want list by priority.
1. Planning for the camping trip vacation will actually have to happen later on once I have sold my house and have specific dates for moving. I am confident it will happen but even though it is #1 on the want list, it will have to wait.
2. Losing 20# is an important goal for me this year. I have been sitting so much the past year and feel unhealthy. To work towards this goal I have scheduled in time for walking the dog twice a day and working out in my home gym. I also schdeuled in time for weekly meal planning, grocery pickup, and meal prep.
3. These 2 articles are so close to being done! I blocked off time in the next 3 weeks to work on each of them and polish them up.
4. I haven’t competed in powerlifting for 6 years (yikes) but it is something that I really like doing and would be fun to do with my powerlifting friends. The one I want to do is in early April on PEI which has been super strict with COVID19 restrictions. I’m still on the fence about this one because it is during a busy part of the semester and there is still a lot of uncertainty about COVID19. I also just realized that it is on Easter weekend so I think that specific competition is going to be a no for me this year. The next 6 months is going to be busy so while I will still work on my strength and fitness, I think the wise choice is to look at competing next year instead.
5. BBQ party TBD…will have to wait and see!

I hope this process helps you with your planning for the next 6 months 🙂

Happy planning!

On Being an Academic Nurse

When I began my PhD I felt the need to be cautious about telling people that I was doing it. Luckily I worked with super supportive colleagues and they never made me feel like I was weird or not a “real” nurse because of my interest in research. In fact, many of them were more than willing to share their experience, wisdom, and insights with me when we worked together. I may not have 20 years of nursing experience but I am a hard worker and a caring nurse who is willing to help others and pull my share. I absolutely loved my time working in geriatric rehab as a staff nurse. There were times when I considered quitting the PhD and staying on there instead. I didn’t leave direct care nursing because I didn’t like it. I didn’t leave because I’m afraid of hard work. Or shift work. Or working holidays.

I’m not quite sure what people think academic nurses do but I honestly cannot remember the last time I took an entire 24 hours off from work. I think it was in May? In addition to teaching, research, and service requirements of most faculty, nursing faculty at many schools (mine included) also teach clinical nursing courses. This term I’m teaching second year students in the hospital which means not only 2-3 full shifts in the hospital every week but tons and tons of prep, organizing, evaluation, and follow-up with students. This is not like a lab where they are practicing on mannequins; they are working with real-life patients who are sick. They are interacting with nurses and physicians. Expectations and anxiety are high. I feel like a mother hen trying to protect them while at the same time give them learning opportunities and reasonable autonomy. Teaching clinical is rewarding in many ways but it is one of the most stressful things I have ever done.

I am also a course assistant for the nursing research course and need to prepare to teach a new-to-me course next semester. On top of this I have also been trying to establish my program of research, attend the meetings I need to go to, and get to a stack of article revisions and new submissions. I took a day trip to Ottawa for a conference between clinical days and it was awesome but also exhausting. Somehow I have managed to still spend quality time with my son, work out at least 3 times/week (although Thursday’s “workout” mostly involved staring blankly at the barbell trying to convince myself that it was workout time), and always have some (mostly) healthy food and clean laundry. It’s the small wins, right?

This is not the life I envisioned 11 months ago when I accepted this job. After working and going to school for a million years I thought it would finally be different. I thought I’d have time to have a life but the reality is that I am working constantly. I thought I’d love being closer to home but it’s not really close enough that I can see my family and friends very often. It’s not super helpful when I want to go do something either (“Hey, dad, can you drive 5 hours and babysit while I go to a movie?”).

It’s not all bad of course; I really love a lot of things about my job. I’m just not sure that I want my life to be my job. I realize that the transition to new job in a new province and a new city is a huge adjustment and that it will get easier as time goes on. My first term has been full of many wonderful things and a couple of not-so-awesome things. Highlights include the joy of seeing nursing students grow and learn, interacting with patients and their families and the staff on the unit, and being part of some inspiring research projects. The best thing of all has been looking at the stars with my son on those early mornings before clinical. In the quiet darkness before sunrise we get to share the awe and peace of the night sky together before the busyness of the day begins. These are the moments I cherish most.

Perplexed by the NCLEX in Canada

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To most Canadian nursing educators, the NCLEX is about as welcome in Canada as Donald Trump. I am not alone in being royally PO’d that the provincial nursing regulatory bodies decided to nix the Canadian Registered Nurses’ Exam (commonly known as the CRNE)to replace it with the NCLEX in 2015.

In case you’re not in nursing or you aren’t Canadian, the NCLEX is the American nursing licensing exam that all American nurses must pass after their nursing degree before they can register as a Registered Nurse. It is an adaptive computerized test that will keep asking tailored questions until the program is 95% sure that the candidate is above or below the passing standard. To be clear, I think that this format and system of testing is awesome. What isn’t awesome is having to teach my students content that is American so that they can pass the test (as if we don’t already have enough content!). The French translation of the NCLEX is also so bad that many Francophone students are failing because they can’t understand the questions (I’m talking outside of Quebec of course because they wisely decided to keep their own nursing exam). Moreover, although French NCLEX practice materials are starting to pop up (after they realized that it was an issue), there aren’t nearly as many resources for French students and educators as for their English-speaking counterparts. Two giant strikes for the NCLEX.

I have no idea why on earth the provincial nursing regulatory bodies made this decision or if they understood the implications of their decision. Initially I was told that it would be a Canadian version of the NCLEX and maybe they thought so too. It is not. It is the exact same database of questions for all candidates in all countries. I could be wrong but I think the rationale behind this is that the NCLEX supposedly is “context-free”. I attended an NCLEX workshop for nursing faculty two years ago and the facilitator explained to us how the test worked and how the questions are designed. She also proudly stated that “the NCLEX has no context”. What she meant was that the questions are designed to be applicable to all contexts. I would question that. Is nursing really that black and white? Maybe some things are but I’d argue that real life requires professional judgement calls too.

There are also huge differences between the US and Canada in terms of how we view health care (as a service to be bought through insurance versus as a basic human right). Specific examples of the “Americaness” of the exam include “the five rights of delegation” and the scope of practice for an RN versus and LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse)[or RPN (Registered Practical Nurse) in Ontario]. In Ontario where I started my nursing career, I worked on a hospital unit with half RNs and half RPNs. We both had our own patient assignments and although the RNs were able to be in charge and dealt with the more complex patients, we were never assigned an RPN to delegate work to and have them report back to us. They had autonomy and we all worked together as a team (for the most part). In the US, LPNs report directly to RNs and the RN assigns patients or patient care duties to them. LPNs are not allowed to engage in patient teaching or any of the nursing process (assessment, planning, evaluation, nursing judgment). (See the Joint Statement of the American Nurses Association and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing here). Why does this even matter? Well, now we have to teach our nursing students about delegation in their own province and the rest of Canada (it is not exactly the same from province to province) AND America. If we don’t tell them that delegation rules for the NCLEX they are going to answer those questions incorrectly and it sure as heck isn’t because we don’t teach them about delegation in Canada.

Some have argued that it is not an American test, to which I respond, then why are Canadian-specific NCLEX prep books popping up? Is it because we are just another market that companies want to exploit, or is it because there is American content that Canadian students need to learn in order to do well on the test?

So where does this put us? Precisely in a giant head-lock. We have excellent nursing programs across Canada and in general our nurses have more education and better quality education than nurses in the US. Many of their students still take 2-year associate degrees whereas in Canada all RNs have to have a four-year bachelor’s degree. Every day I am impressed with the quality of the education that the students get at UNB and especially with the amount of real life clinical they get (over 1400 hours). However, now we need to add in NCLEX-specific content to make sure that our students are prepared to take an American nursing test. Not to prepare them for their practice as an RN – we do that exceptionally well already!

Clearly I have strong feelings about the NCLEX and not everyone will agree with me but I don’t think that Canadian nursing students should have to learn American content in order to become nurses in Canada. I also don’t think that nursing schools should be judged by their NCLEX pass rates. Passing the NCLEX or not doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of a nursing program, but, rather the “NCLEX test readiness” of graduates. Some schools are starting to make it a requirement for nursing students to write the HESI NCLEX practice test and obtain a certain score before they can graduate and write the NCLEX. This ensures that pass rates on the actual NCLEX are high because it increases candidates’ test-taking skills and ensures that they don’t write until they are ready (sometimes after writing the HESI numerous times). As a result, high NCLEX pass rates are not necessarily a reflection of the quality of the nursing school, but of the readiness of the student to write the NCLEX. I don’t think that it is a bad thing to take the HESI per se, but I do think it is misleading to compare first-time NCLEX pass rates between schools who have a HESI score requirement and those who do not. Taking these tests (the HESI and the NCLEX), attending NCLEX review sessions, and purchasing NCLEX study guides are also very expensive so making the decision to require the HESI is not one to take lightly.

So there you have it. The NCLEX has made it harder to become a nurse in Canada and more challenging to be a Canadian nursing educator. Arguably, it has also made it easier for Canadian nurses to practice in the US (if you don’t mind working in a f0r-profit health care system). I’m not a fan and I think that it was strange decision. It is also possible that I am not privy to confidential information about why this decision was made and, thus, do not fully understand the rationale behind it. That being said, until the situation changes, it really doesn’t matter if I agree or not, no matter how logical my arguments are; the fact is that we need to do what we can to prepare our students for an American test.

Lessons from my First Year of University Teaching

Last term I taught the 3rd year data analysis course for nursing students at Western. Boy, was it a ton of work! Overall, I really enjoyed the experience and learned a lot about how teaching and learning has changed since I first began university back in 2001. Currently I am teaching a graduate-level course in post-positivist (quantitative) research methodology and that is a super fun! I really enjoy in-depth intellectual discussions about research with a small group (18 students) rather than talking at 120 undergrads who don’t care about statistics at all and want the “right answer” (which isn’t always possible).

Here are the top lessons I learned about teaching so far (I am sure there are many more to come!)

1. I am a dinosaur. I grew up going to the library, reading hard copy books, writing out essays on paper with a pencil, etc. Students these days have always had the internet at their fingertips and they will sit there and Google everything that you say like fact-checkers at a political debate. Take home message: I need to learn how to use technology to my advantage and not waste valuable time in class lecturing off of PowerPoint slides when I could be using more engaging activities during face-to-face time.

2. Students need structure more than I realized. One of the assignments last term was to do a content analysis of transcripts from interviews or online forum discussions by patients with different conditions. Rather than embrace the freedom of interpreting the data for themselves, many students were frustrated because there was no certain correct answer (like so many things in real life). We gave them a reference for an article that told them step-by-step how to conduct a content analysis and about 1/3 of the class did not read it, resulting in them doing the assignment in a way that did not make sense. Somehow the fact that they did not read the article that they were explicitly told to read was my fault. Interesting. Take home message: Repeat key instructions in class, post them on slides, etc. Give them explicit instructions.

3. TAs are like a box of chocolates. Seriously though, you never know what your TA will be like and they may not know the course material or mark assignments the way that you would like them to be marked. They are also graduate students with their own coursework, lives, etc. so be realistic about expectations. Despite having good rubrics, the assignments that we had in the course were lengthy and complex which also made it challenging for the TAs. Also, students will blame you for delays in marking and mistakes on their rubrics, even if you make sure they know their TA does the marking. Take home message: Design assignments that are staged so that they are easier to evaluate by someone with little content knowledge of your course.

4. PhDs do not prepare people to be awesome teachers. I really thought that my experience teaching lifeguarding and first aid, personal training, and coaching basketball would make teaching easier but university teaching is very different. It is kind of sad that students pay so much money for school and the quality of teaching is so varied. I really like that tenure-track teaching positions are becoming more prevalent and that most schools are providing support for teaching. I feel lucky to be able to gain some teaching experience and attend workshops and courses at Western’s Teaching Support Centre during my doctoral program. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to pop into a tenure-track job and try teaching for the first time while trying to apply for grants, publish articles, and commit to service. This job is crazy. Don’t get me wrong, it is what I want to do (and as an RN I know that I have lots of other options), but I am also not naive to the demands of the career path I am pursuing. Take home message: I need to devote more time to learning to be an effective teacher so I can have a successful transition into a tenure-track position.

Now to get back to working on that dissertation proposal! (It is almost done and I am planning to defend in the Spring so that I can get started on data collection!).