Oconnor Clickers Help Education

Running head: PEER REVIEW

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Peer Review Do Clickers Help Nursing Education to “Click” in the Classroom Jean A. O’Connor State University of New York Polytechnic Institute

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Master’s Position Paper - Peer Review Form Title of the Paper you reviewed: Do Clickers Help Nursing Education to “Click in the classroom? Yes X X X

No

X X X X X Yes

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X X X X X X X Yes X X

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General Questions about the topic: Is the Content: Relevant to nursing/ nursing education? Timely? Written at the appropriate level for the intended audience? Is this a new topic or new idea? If not, is it a known idea, but presented in a different way? Are the cited references applicable to the paper? Does the title sound interesting and capture your curiosity? Was APA formatting followed in the paper Questions related to Substance of Paper Does the introduction adequately prepare you to understand the content Does the body of the work flow in an understandable fashion? Are headings and subheadings used appropriately? Is the paper well organized? Are key or new concepts well defined or explained? Does the paper add examples to demonstrate key ideas? Does the background include unnecessary information? Does the conclusion support or recommend future topics or research? Overall comments Would you rate this paper as Very Good to Excellent? Do you believe the information is this paper applies to nurse educators? What additional comments or suggestions do you have for this author? Notes:

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Do Clickers Help Nursing Education to “Click” in the classroom is the title of the master’s position paper that I had the pleasure of providing a peer review on. I believe I was able to garner the author’s position on the topic in the introduction. The author’s first line, “Every educator wants to be that one teacher who finally made a concept “click” for a student,” lead me to believe that the author was hopeful that this type of technology would benefit students in some way, and that I would be provided with support as to why this technology was going to beneficial. Clicker use as a successful tool used in an active learning environment was the main topic of this paper. ”Clickers have shown to be an effective tool in active classroom learning both in nursing courses and general courses (discussed further below).” Though it was clear to me on the author’s support of clicker use in both the introduction and topic headings, I felt the transition from defense of the clicker to the negative aspects of cost in the significance of the topic section caused me to go back and re-read this section. I also started to doubt the author’s support of the clicker in the relevance to improving nursing education section when the author questioned the overall cost to students, and specifically when the author wrote, “Don’t students already have enough additional out-of-pocket expenses?” I started to think that maybe the evidence wasn’t supportive enough to support the cost. My suggestions to the author would be to include more information about what the clicker actually is in the introduction, and why this “…relatively new educational tool used within the classroom setting” is, or might be, important in nursing education. In the Significance of the Topic heading I would smooth the transition as to why or why not the cost of the clicker is significant to the topic Could the idea of cost be covered in recommendations to nurse educators, or questions raised for the future of nursing education on the negative impacts of cost, and perhaps creative solutions to minimizing those costs based on the evidence. Cost is also a strong focus in the relevance to improving nursing education, but I’m not sure how this is relevant to improving nursing education. I think I would try to support the

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use of the clicker by backing it up with adult learning theories, or active learning theories that would support its use, thereby proving it to be cost effective. In the last four headers of the paper: Who will benefit, How will this topic affect those it will benefit, Conclusion, and topic for future nurse educators, statements are broad, such as “Optimal use of institutional-provided clickers within the classroom setting of nursing programs would benefit the nursing students”, however, I don’t see any literature references to support the authors statements for any of these paragraphs. Overall I thought this was an interesting topic, and one I was unfamiliar with.