evolving role of the nurse leader
The term “knowledge worker” was first coined by management consultant and author Peter Drucker in his book, The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959). Drucker defined knowledge workers as high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge, acquired through formal training, to develop products and services. Does this sound familiar?
Nurses are very much knowledge workers. What has changed since Drucker’s time are the ways that knowledge can be acquired. The volume of data that can now be generated and the tools used to access this data have evolved significantly in recent years and helped healthcare professionals (among many others) to assume the role of knowledge worker in new and powerful ways.
In this Assignment, you will consider the evolving role of the nurse leader and how this evolution has led nurse leaders to assume the role of knowledge worker. You will prepare a PowerPoint presentation with an infographic (graphic that visually represents information, data, or knowledge. Infographics are intended to present information quickly and clearly.) to educate others on the role of nurse as knowledge worker.
Reference: Drucker, P. (1959). The landmarks of tomorrow. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
To Prepare:
Review the concepts of informatics as presented in the Resources.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. G. (2018). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (4th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Sweeney, J. (Feb, 2017). Healthcare Informatics. Online Journal of Nursing Informatics, 21(1).
Reflect on the role of a nurse leader as a knowledge worker.
Consider how knowledge may be informed by data that is collected/accessed.
The Assignment:
Explain the concept of a knowledge worker.
Define and explain nursing informatics and highlight the role of a nurse leader as a knowledge worker.
Develop a simple infographic to help explain these concepts.
Your PowerPoint should Include the hypothetical scenario you originally shared in the Discussion Forum. Include your examination of the data that you could use, how the data might be accessed/collected, and what knowledge might be derived from that data. Be sure to incorporate feedback received from your colleagues’ responses.
Develop a 5- to 6-slide PowerPoint presentation that addresses the following:
Explain the concept of a knowledge worker.
Define and explain nursing informatics and highlight the role of a nurse leader as a knowledge worker.
Develop a simple infographic to help explain these concepts.
Use the document in the resource section entitled: How to Make an Infographic in PowerPoint
Present the hypothetical scenario you originally shared in the Discussion Forum. Include your examination of the data you could use, how the data might be accessed/collected, and what knowledge might be derived from the data. Be sure to incorporate feedback received from your colleagues’ replies.
Slide One: define the concept of a knowledge worker (you can use the information presented in the assignment instructions to assist)
Slide Two-Three: Define and explain nursing informatics
Slide Three, Four, and Five: Highlight the role of a nurse leader as a knowledge worker
Remember: You must include at least three (3) peer reviewed journal articles AND two (2) course resources for the assignment.
10 Learning & Leading with Technology | February 2012
The “anchor standards” in the Common Core State Standards define college and career read- iness, in part, as the ability to “integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.”
www.corestandards.org
Meet the Standards
The NETS for Students address skill sets that include the interpretation and creation of infographics. The NETS’ Creativity and Innovation indicators include creating original works and using models, its Communication and Collaboration indicators speak to communicating information and ideas using a variety of media, and the Research and Information Fluency section refers to processing data and reporting results using a variety of tools.
iste.org/standards/nets-students
Most subject-matter standards give attention to sense-making and information literacy, both of which students develop when they interpret and design infographics.
By Jane Krauss
More Than Words Can Say
Good learning experiences ask students to investigate and make sense of the world. While there are many ways to do this, K–12 curriculum has traditionally skewed toward reading and writing to interpret and express students’ sense-making. But there is another way. Infographics represent data and ideas visually, in pictures, engag- ing more parts of the brain to look at a problem from more than one angle.
Infographics ask for an active response from the viewer, raising the ques- tions, “What am I seeing?” and “What does it mean?” As the old adage goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words, and pictures can be essential when complexity demands more than words can say.
Infographics is to
c k p h o to
.c o m /b u s im
a r u s i
What Is an Infographic?
Simply put, infographics are visual displays
of information.
An infographic
is handcrafted to bundle related data sets into a unified, visually
compelling representation. The juxtaposition of those sets of information relates
a more complex story.
Infographics go a step beyond the old-
fashioned graphics—charts, timelines, tables, and graphs—
created by simply applying a computer program to a few
like data sets.
Copyright © 2012, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.
February 2012 | Learning & Leading with Technology 11
Boost Comprehension
Much of the mental processing that goes into the development of infographics has parallels in computational thinking (CT), the thinking patterns that computer scientists use to solve problems. CT skills have value beyond computer science, as they help us approach problems and apply processes to solve them. CT can help students practice with data sets of any size, manipulate that data, and represent it in an infographic. For
Linguistic
graphic organizers
modeling software
computer simulations
kinesthetic activities
textbooks
lectures
Robert Marzano www.marzanoresearch.com Education researcher Robert Marzano confirmed that learners acquire and store knowledge though linguistic systems, which they use when they read or listen to lectures, and nonlinguistic systems, which they tap to process computer simulations and kinesthetic activities. The more students use both systems, the better they are able to store, recall, and apply new understandings.
Because they make use of both words and visuals, infographics
strike the sweet spot where linguistic and nonlinguistic
systems converge.
Teach Computational Thinking
example, students can collect statistics about their friends’ Facebook connections, analyze the data, and present their findings graphically.
Recent technological advances have led to an explosion of available data, allowing students and teachers to access a much wider variety of real-time statistics on such topics as weather patterns, deforestation, and population movements.
Infographics
Nonlinguistic
CT is essential for working with these large data sets and creating infographics to help analyze them. Imagine how your students might use CT skills to collect, process, and render raw data into infographics, with or without the aid of computer programs.
For more information about computational thinking, visit iste.org/computational-thinking.
This green- card application
flowchart (http://tinyurl. com/7tbomzh), created by
high school seniors from the Science Leadership Academy, follows the “if-then” rule of
BASIC programming, a computational thinking
concept.
Copyright © 2012, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.
12 Learning & Leading with Technology | February 2012
Introduce Infographics Ask your students to pretend they work for the Utah tourism bureau. Their charge is to design a promo-
tional poster that will convince visitors that Utah’s slogan, “The Greatest Snow
on Earth,” is true. Let them talk to one another and noodle around a bit with sketches.
Share Michael Greenberg’s Ski Utah infographic. Display an enlarged view from his Graph the Info blog at www. graphthe.info.
Ask students what they learned about skiing in Utah from Greenberg’s pictorial representation. Encourage them to examine the legend, which describes an unusual representation of area. Ask what they can infer about the mountains that may get the most and least business. Ask them to make conjectures about how many data sets the infographic represents and how Greenberg derived them.
Ask how they could represent other data of interest to someone contem- plating a Utah ski vacation, such as the distance from the airport or winter temperatures.
Together, read what Greenberg writes on his blog about the five-step process he used to create the Ski Utah infographic.
Lesson Plans
The Ski Utah infographic below, created by Michael Greenberg when he was a high school senior, gives a sense of how a single infographic can represent multiple data sets.
Step One: Get an idea.
Teaching Infographics
Step Four: Develop proof of concepts.
Does your curriculum ask students to engage in analysis and interpre- tation to derive meaning? You can use infographics as a tool for develop- ing these capabilities in your students, both when they interpret the graphics and when they create them.
Interpret n Present infographics that ask
students to make sense of dynamic systems, relational data, or change over time.
n To build their critical faculties, present both good and bad charts, graphs, and infographics…
