Technology and Innovation

Guided by our vision and supported by a group of faculty, staff, students, alumni and community partners who embrace a spirit of innovation, UC College of Nursing prepares nurse leaders to provide the best care for all patients in the ever-changing and increasingly complex reality of patient and health care. The college’s increasing support for the transformation in teaching and learning and our sustainable model for enhancing technology and innovation has led to our recognition as an Apple Distinguished School since 2014.

Our technology implementation is based on the TPACK model, which reinforces the purposeful blending of technology, content, and pedagogy as key to enhancing student learning experiences.

OLDDI is the college’s in-house instructional design (ID) and information technology (IT) department, a key facilitator of technology adoption by the college. It provides a high level of customer support, along with the resources necessary to develop innovative, technology-based active learning and teaching solutions.

• Instructional Design: our professionals are experts in how, why and when to use educational technologies to maximize the teaching and learning experience. These professionals partner with subject-matter experts — our faculty — to create engaging and effective technology-based learning materials.
  

• Information Technology: our professionals build, test, install, repair and maintain the college's technology infrastructure, and offer complete technology support for students, faculty and staff.

Simulation is a well-documented, powerful pedagogical approach to education in the health professions. It supports competency-learning by immersing students across many dimensions and linking didactic information with thinking, applying and performing skills in practice.

Used for teaching theoretical and clinical skills while focusing on the promotion of critical thinking, simulation recreates authentic patient care encounters in a safe and controlled environment; it allows faculty to design immersive experiences that bridge theory to practice and gives students the freedom to make mistakes and to learn from them.

In addition to two simulation labs, the college has designed virtual reality (VR) case studies to expand simulation opportunities.