Quarterly Performance Report, Fourth Quarter, Year 4

 

Here is a link to the full report provided to the Department of Education. Here is a high level overview of the project’s accomplishments this quarter:

• Google Analytics data continues to show broad international usage of Open RN textbooks with over 7.5 million page views by over 3 million international users. Additionally, 58 colleges and universities across the United States have adopted one or more print versions of the Open RN textbooks and 598 institutions have downloaded XanEdu’s free PDFs of Open RN print versions.

• A sixth OER nursing textbook entitled Advanced Nursing Skills completed the peer review process in February and will be published by May 2023. An affordable print version is anticipated to be available in bookstores and on Amazon by September 2023. Based on WTCS faculty request, skills demonstration videos were also created and embedded within the book, as well as uploaded to the Open RN YouTube channel. These videos were created to save students additional money by eliminating the need to subscribe to commercial vendors to view these types of hands-on instructional videos.

• An additional OER textbook entitled Nursing Assistant was published in January 2023. This book was created with HEERF funding using Open RN workflows and processes. It was developed for the Nursing Assistant course, a prerequisite course for WTCS Nursing and other health programs. It is projected to save WTCS students over $654,000 annually. Skills demonstration videos were also embedded within this book and uploaded to the Open RN YouTube channel.

• The Open RN videos are being utilized widely. As of March 1, there have been 414,901 video views, 4200+ hours of watch time, and 777 subscribers on the Open RN YouTube Channel.

• In collaboration with LibreTexts, the ADAPT software platform was customized as part of Open RN’s “Next Gen RN” spinoff project. The customized ADAPT platform underwent beta testing by a group of WTCS faculty in February and will be released in April 2023 along with associated online training materials. A repository of twenty NCLEX Next Generation-style case-studies is being created and shared in ADAPT with CC BY 4.0 licensing. Additionally, the Open RN team is creating separate NCLEX Next Generation-style questions in ADAPT that will be linked within the second editions of the Open RN textbooks as formative assessments and freely available to students.

• The development of the second edition of the Nursing Pharmacology OER textbook began this quarter. Revisions are being made based on feedback obtained from WTCS Course Leads as well as updates contained in the 2023 NCLEX Text Plan. Based on previous peer reviewer feedback, additional NCLEX Next Generation-style case studies and questions are also being added to each chapter. This second edition of the online Nursing Pharmacology book will be released in summer 2023.

• Acadicus, the VR vendor for the Open RN project, demonstrated the basic version of their new VR Birthing Simulator to the Open RN VR workgroup in January. Open RN OB VR scenarios will be developed through the end of the grant period and an OB VR Sim Manager Tutorial will also be created as a resource for faculty and sim technicians. 

• Excellent feedback continues to be received regarding the Open RN virtual simulations created in H5P. Over 91% of 900 survey respondents “agree” or “strongly agree” these virtual simulations help develop clinical judgment. These virtual simulations can be easily accessed by students with minimal barriers because they are viewed online asynchronously with any device that connects to the internet. As additional virtual simulations are being created that will be linked from the Open RN textbooks, we are exploring and testing the use of artificial intelligence tools like Play.HT and Midjourney to add more diverse patient images and audio to further contextualize these scenarios.