Teaching a New Language with Technology with Dr. Katherine Rosselot
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:41] No, fortunately, you did not have that because you might still be working on it right now.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:40:46] Well, that’s true, too.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:40:47] I want to make that plug. I tell all of you are thinking mixed methods. Forget about it. You can do it later if you want. It takes too much time. It’s like doing two research projects and you only need one to graduate. Yeah. Now you’re in that magical point where you get to do anything you want, Doctor Rosselot. So if you want to do this study, which does make sense, you want to get numbers. But you also, as we even alluded to before I was talking to you. It would be nice to talk to some of these students and see what was your experience using that out, and I bet you they would have said they qualitatively felt different about it than the students who didn’t have it.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:41:26] And what’s interesting is I actually have had I mean, I’ve been teaching even after finishing up and there have been some nursing students that I’ve allowed access to the to the application that weren’t part of the original project. And they have come back to me and they’ve said, oh, my gosh, this this has helped me so much. It was it it was like that final push to put the puzzle pieces together. And so they were actually able to they saw a lot of value in it. And then that that was very instrumental in me wanting to continue the work. What was the feedback that they gave me? I have talked to some other nursing educators and their feedback has been very, very positive as well. And and then, like I said, getting it from someone who teaches medical students and people who teach just anatomy and physiology in general. So I’ve I’ve been given quite a few opportunities to to do presentations this next summer, cross our fingers that it’s not going to interfere. I will be speaking in Singapore at an international conference.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:42:49] Very cool.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:42:50] About about my stuff.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:42:52] Yeah, I do hope that this covid thing continues to recede. We’re starting to get vaccines now as we’re recording this and everybody cross your fingers and hold on tight.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:43:04] So it’s been really nice to realize that, that, yes, this is something that is viable beyond even just getting the Ph.D. And it was very also heartening to me that how much my committee, my my committee members were encouraging me to to to do further research as well as that they wanted me to start publishing about it. And I’m I’m actually working with one particular journal about possibly doing a publication with them. And they have actually asked me to become a peer reviewer for their for their education. So when they are given topics of education, technology as it relates to nursing education, I’m I will be a peer reviewer for them.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:44:07] And so immediately audience is sayin, OK, wait, she’s some sort of rock star, peer-reviewer, journal article. Back before you graduated, would you have thought that you would ever in a million years be the person looking at other people’s research, critically evaluating it and telling the journal whether this flies or not? What would you have thought that would be you when you were in your doctoral degree program,.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:44:31] Not even close.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:44:33] OK, I was going to say for the video, she’s shaking your head for the audio…
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:44:37] Not not not in a million years, you know, because the goal. The original goal was just simple, it was just to get the Ph.D. And to go back in and teach baccalaureate and possibly master’s level nursing students, and.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:44:58] But what happens in that process is there’s a natural transformation. There’s something that you do that you go through as you’re preparing your dissertation where you are a different person coming out than when you were there. Know, I get folks telling me all the time, I don’t know why they won’t let me graduate. And my answer is, you’re not a doctor yet. And it’s not that you’re not a doctor because they won’t let you graduate. They won’t let you graduate the doctor. Once you’ve made that kind of transformation, you think about things differently and you can sort of see and understand the world in a different way. That’s when you’re a doctor. The piece of paper on the wall is great. If you really kind of need that, if you want a job, but but, but, but you’ve made the transformation during that dissertation process and that’s when you get to graduate. But I think it’s just it’s an example of one of those many, many things our our students have come back and told us, guess what I’m doing now? That they would have never thought of it while they’re working on their dissertation.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:45:57] The other thing that’s been very uplifting for me is, like you said, being being singled out as a subject matter expert. And a thing that I’ve an interesting point that I found out when I was doing my research was the fact that I mean, after I got it all selected and planned out and everything else, I hadn’t really got gotten into. Well, who all has done this? Well, come to find out, they there were only two studies that happened prior that had to do with nursing education and medical terminology. The first one was done in nineteen eighty five. The second one was actually a replication of the nineteen eighty five study done by a graduate student who studied under the person who did the first part.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:46:55] Yeah.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:46:56] So basically in 30 years. I’m the first person to kind of go back and really look at this.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:47:05] And technology changed so much in that period of time, right?
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:47:11] The technology has definitely changed. But. The recognition of the need for basic medical terminology, education in nursing has not been there.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:47:26] Well, the pedagogy is the same. It’s the technology that’s changed. But since this project is so steeped in technology, it is a bit of a surprise that people hadn’t revisited this. As technology continue to evolve.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:47:42] Correct, and and in this particular focus, in medical terminology, actually lent itself extremely well to to this particular type of, you know, to to the smartphone application. And as a result, I feel like this is really pushed forward an avenue to where nursing students or nursing schools, I should say, do not have to actually have a particular course. And in basic medical terminology, if when it’s added as an adjunct to methodology for teaching, then we’re still going to get the same outcome, but without having to take a separate a separate course.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:48:35] And I think this is an instance where the technology, the evolution in technology will will qualitatively change your results as well. In nineteen eighty five, you would not have had someone with their computer looking at nursing terminology while they’re standing on line at the grocery store or something like that. You can talk a little bit about immersion before, but this notion of being able to to to frequently touch base with with something with some new material pedagogically has been shown to be very, very effective across the board. And so if you can take a quick hit of 30 seconds a minute, two minutes of I’m learning some nursing terminology and then you come back to it again later on, you’re not necessarily sitting down for an hour and pushing yourself to do it, but you can just do this ad hoc throughout the day.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:49:26] Absolutely.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:49:26] It’s going to build I mean, it’s going to create a different type of learning from a from a neurological standpoint.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:49:33] And it makes sense from the standpoint of when you’re actually working in the field. You know, are you speaking solely in medical terminology all the time now? And so as a result, if you’re into it for like maybe 10, 15 minutes because you’re waiting on that on your dentist, then it. It seems almost natural to start including those words just in everyday activities, because it’s done in increments and not just, you know, all at once. So so there’s that connection in the brain that that also happens. The other thing that that made this project extremely fun and that I’m extremely proud of is the fact that the expense involved is next to nothing. It’s a particular phone application platform was free. I do want to create my own from the standpoint, my own smartphone application, because of the fact that there were things, obviously, about the platform that was not geared towards what I needed. Right. So I had to kind of make do with what I had. But it but it definitely showed me a way to restructure it in such a way that it would be beneficial.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:51:00] It’s the framework you saw that even when it was not purpose-built for this process, it still is very, very helpful to nursing students. And when you can can tweak things a little bit, you will achieve even even greater success. They’ll the adoption rate will probably be higher. It’ll just be better tool when it’s purpose-built.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:51:24] Oh, absolutely. The other thing that that that I’m putting it I’m going to be putting into the into the application is not just medical terminology, but there’s also some very specific things in pharmacology that are not something that you would consider as being terminology-based, but it’s it is stuff that nurses will it is information that nurses need to know, it’s information that they’re going to come across on a frequent basis. Right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:51:56] Drug use isn’t technically vocabulary, but it functions much the same way.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:52:02] Correct. Such as nursing, such as? How to calculate an IV drip, Ray. And they’re very basic, just basic algebra, but if you don’t practice it, then then obviously it becomes you become rusty at it. The the other thing is the different abbreviations that are used in in pharmacology that you don’t normally see in normal writing. There is also lab values. It’s incredibly important for for nurses to know basic lab values and so that they can immediately see, is this something I need to take actions on?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:52:48] And and so the notion of having it and incorporating it into your life, I think is so important that as you were talking about this, I had flashbacks when I was originally graduate school as I was studying astronomy and astrophysics. So to be a research professor and do that and as folks who listen to podcast know, I took a turn when my research advisor died. It was very unexpected as a plane crash, and it caused me to reevaluate some things and choose to go a different path. But while I was there and studying that, I knew things like what is the typical mass of the sun in kilograms? So you might know how a nurse might know how many kilograms a person should weigh, how many kilograms the star would weigh, and a galaxy and how wide they were, and all these different things, these numbers that were shorthands that I could use to estimate and tell whether things were on track or not. And I couldn’t tell you at all any of that stuff anymore because I haven’t used it in, you know, well, and there’s a war.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:53:52] And the thing is, is when when nursing students you’re. There’s so much information that has to be incorporated in your head just to even get through the programs themselves to it. So there there does tend to be a little bit of that whole. A data dump at the end of a term.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:54:18] Purging the stuff that you don’t really need.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:54:23] Well, the thing is, if you think you don’t need it right away, nursing school, everything truly builds truth from one one course to the next. I mean, there’s a.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:54:34] Until you really know what your specialty is going to be, you don’t know what you really need and what you don’t need because you’re not going to be a nurse in a lot of the things that you learned wouldn’t apply. Right.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:54:45] But you don’t know if you’re good at school. Yeah. You could ask your you’re trained you’re trained to be a generalist. Exactly right.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:54:54] And that’s and that’s why, like you said, you think you don’t need it, but you don’t know exactly what you’re doing. You’re going to need until you’ve gotten further down in your career. And you can’t cover up any of this stuff anyway, because I know my wife, the nurse nurses can move around and do things no different specialties from time to time more easily than, say, a physician isn’t going to go from being a radiologist to a dermatologist or something? Yeah, you’re going to kind of stick with that specialty for your career, but nurses can move in and out of specialties a little bit more fluidly.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:55:29] And the the other reason why having this type of technology work so incredibly well for nursing students is that it is truly a way to incorporate quite a bit of new knowledge that is critical. In terms of being able to think through how do I take care of this patient so they have a piece of this, they have a piece of that, and they can apply it to the patient. And so we actually see those critical thinking skills become developed through being able to. Readily access that knowledge, and so as a result of it, very quickly.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:56:18] We talk about synthesis for doctoral students, right? This is when you use this stuff right. You have to be able to do this in the real world. Exactly. I don’t hear from a lot of our doctoral students when I’m ever going to use this like kids in high school or something will say. But but clearly, this is something that folks have to use as a skill. All right, Katherine, you mentioned that you’re you’re doing you’re working as a peer reviewer. Now, can you mentioned the journal that you’re working with?
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:56:44] It’s it’s the Journal of Holistic Nursing. The, um, the particular organization is called the American Holistic Nursing Association. And it is a wonderful, wonderful organization. And I’ve been a member for quite some time. And and I’m I’m very pleased to see not only is the organization looking at the whole person in terms of their their spiritual and physical and mental and, you know, it’s no longer categorizing a person like, well, the gallbladder in room two or five, right, it’s looking at it from a much more personal aspect. They are actually starting to incorporate education and showing how the technologies even come into play and can make effects on not only the patients, but also the nurses. Because if we because if we take care of the nurses, like, you know, like I said when I learned that if I take care of myself, then I have a lot more to give to my my family. And so the same thing happens obviously on our our personal or professional careers is that the more we. The more we’re able to to focus on the needs that we have, our own personal needs in terms of growth, then. The more we have to offer to our patients so and.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:58:30] It’s so important. I want people to understand that you have to take care of yourself, you have to make sure not just, you know, I’ll talk to doctoral students and working on their dissertation, get the help that you need, whether it’s for me from someone else, get the help that you need so that you can be strong through that. But when you do that, you’re going to then have earned your doctoral degree. How much more can you help other people when you’ve gotten to that point? Don’t hold yourself back from being able to help others because you think it’s selfish to take care of yourself. It really isn’t. And that applies to all aspects of your life. You know, taking time to go to the gym and do whatever it is that you need to do. It makes you a stronger person. And that’s not a selfish thing. That’s a giving thing. You can do more for other people when you’re stronger.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:59:16] Right. And that’s and that’s again, like I said, that’s what I love about the American Holistic Nurses Association, is that they really focus on how do you incorporate all those things that are important to you as a person, that it’s not just a physical piece.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:59:31] Before we wrap up, Katherine, I know that you mentioned that the other research of what you’re doing and I think is so cool and so much fun. You mentioned that you were looking for folks that might be interested in this research and a site or something. To tell us more about that, go ahead and give a plug for anybody who wants to get in on this really exciting. It really is.
Dr. Katherine Rosselot [00:59:54] Some of my limitations that occurred during my my research was the one size the school I used was fairly small. And I would I would be so thrilled to work with a major university or any university, actually, that has a baccelaureate program or even an aid program to get help. That allows me a bigger sample size. And so I really I really feel like that would add some. Real value to the to the process, and I and I also believe it will make a difference in terms of the final outcome of the smartphone application as well, because obviously I can tweak it to match up with the issues that I saw. And that’s one of those things that.
