Exploring a curricular shift towards relational practice: equipping online educators and students for a human-focused future

The learning goal of my 2018/19 Fellowship application is to explore, analyze and document the process experience of applying relational practice within curriculum. This will mean ‘reimagining’ the work of online faculty and support staff, in order to begin to determine what a compassionate and relational core could be.

My earlier fellowship work focused on demonstrating the ‘what’ needs to be done in terms of initiatives for relational practice in online education. The 2018/19
fellowship project focuses research on the ‘how’ to build relational capacity and a curricular shift in online nursing education.

As the rate of technological change intensifies, there is a growing tension regarding how humans will coexist within technologies that have artificial intelligence capabilities. The exponential potential for machine learning that expresses cognitive ability will transform health care and health education. I believe it is imperative to develop expertise and research in nursing that regards human connectedness and relationship as a core competency in nursing education.

This fellowship would extend my research into the pedagogical initiatives of relational practice towards a collaborative learning approach among online faulty; research that identifies technological disruption and explores opportunities for relational practice as a transformational change to our curriculum. The outcomes of this fellowship project will contribute to identifying and implementing processes among online nursing faculty for integrating our understanding of relational practice into nursing curriculum. The outcome will be a curricular framework that identifies capacities for compassion, curiosity, commitment, and competence among online nursing students.