Building a Project Plan as a Nurse Educator
During the pandemic, I started doing puzzles. 🧩
Now, I have another business idea around building the "Netflix of Puzzles" (you do them once and never put them together again - We should be exchanging them!). But for this post, we will focus on puzzles as an analogy for our work.
Every semester, as a nursing instructor, you essentially orchestrate a complex, 2000-piece puzzle - except the pieces are moving, and the image is constantly changing. But that adds to the challenge, right? 😉
How can you make this puzzle easier on yourself? That is where a project plan, a checklist of tasks you can repeat every term or semester, can help.
What is a project?
A project is a unique product or service with a definitive beginning and end. The repetitive but constantly changing work we do as educators each semester lends itself well to the concept of a project.
For this article, I want you to think of each theory course, each clinical, and each workload demand as a project.
Why use a project plan?
With increasing schedule demands and the increasing complexity of the educator role, having a clear path each term from start to finish can free up your time, energy, and mental bandwidth. 🧠
I will always advocate for being more than a nursing educator and setting up our work so that we can fill the other roles in our lives. We all want to have time to hike outside 🧗🏼, cook a healthy meal🍳, read a book for fun 📚, or go to a child's soccer game ⚽ without checking email or thinking about to-do lists.
Having a project plan for your semester can free up valuable mental space. We carry so many tasks and to-dos in our brains. Having a system to capture all of these tasks and then present them back to your future self when they are due is life-changing!
In this article, I will walk you through how I developed a project plan for a course that I am teaching. And once it's created, you can use it again and again with only minor edits every term. Once it is in place, you will wonder how you functioned without it. It will become a part of your workflow, as second nature as checking a blood pressure.
Start with a task dump
The first step when you get a new puzzle is to get it all out of the box. So start by getting it all out of your brain!
Using whatever writing tool you prefer (or the template below!), start brainstorming all of the tasks you do to start up a course or clinical section. Here are some thought joggers:
Revise Syllabus
Print rosters
Send welcome email
Update LMS (Blackboard/Canvas) lessons
Check drop date for course
Prepare online exams
Setup quizzes
Review gradebook
Sometimes it can help to divide these into sections, such as "things to print" or "tasks in LMS (Canvas/Blackboard/etc.)." But the idea is to get it all out of your brain and onto the page. Even small tasks, that maybe only take 5 minutes, should be included.
Organize the Tasks
Now it is time to sort the puzzle pieces. Everyone has a system to clump like pieces together when starting a fresh puzzle - by color, by shape, etc. You can do what works for you here. Putting them in buckets of "Beginning, Middle, End" is the most natural organization method for me. You do tasks to start and close down a course, and labeling them by time can help you naturally progress through the flow of a term.
I am also a huge fan of color coding as an organizational tool. For example, if you are doing a task dump for multiple courses or clinical, assign them an ink color. This action will help you quickly visualize which course the task goes with when sorting them into beginning, middle, and end categories.
Decide on an Organizational System
Now, there are hundreds of tools to organize a project. The key here is to choose something that works for you and that you will stick to using.
If that is a traditional paper calendar, go with that! If you want to try a more advanced system that will send you text messages when you forget a task, there is something for that too! Here are a few virtual tools that I know of that can help you to manage a project:
Todoist
Notion
Click-Up
Asana
I used Todoist for many years. It is simple and functions just how you expect a to-do list to work. You can create templates to use every semester, and you can set up recurring tasks. In addition, there is an app so you can easily capture your thoughts on the go.
But I outgrew it.
Now, I use Notion, which has a free account and loads of features. I certainly don't use all of them, and I utilize the free account, but I developed a system that works for me. I have included a simplified version of my Notion workflow as a template for you to start using if you are interested.
**Once you click the button, you will see a “Duplicate” selection in the top right corner. This will allow you to copy the template into your own workspace.
Using the Notion Template
Below is a short video on utilizing the template.
Use the System Daily
As a new educator, I was surprised by how little direct supervision I had. I had come from an ER environment where I had a charge nurse working alongside me every single day. If you didn't pull your weight, it was evident to the team, and you immediately received feedback. When I started as new faculty, I had a few teaching observations, but that was it. No one really "checked" my work. I quickly discovered that my department's standards guided my evaluations, grading, and feedback to students, but I would be responsible for upholding my standards. And I would need to be a little hard on myself to do that.
I started using this project plan system as my “supervisor” - checking in on my progress, keeping me on task, and ensuring that I do not let anything slip through the cracks. It is my current self, creating the tasks, making plans, and setting the due dates so that my future self knows what to do to in order to accomplish my work effectively and efficiently.
Make it a goal to use the system every day for two weeks. In a previous newsletter, we reviewed the importance of using our environment to create a habit, and you could certainly use that concept for building this habit. Notion has a desktop app, and I leave it open on my computer's toolbar, so it is easy for me to check every day when I sit down at my computer. I also use the app on my phone to review the day or add reminders. It has become as natural as checking my calendar.
Other Uses for a Project Plan
While the example we covered here applies to a course or clinical as the project, this concept can also be applied to other types of work that we do as educators.
Taking on a New Initiative
This use is more of a traditional project. For example, you want to implement an escape room lesson into one of your theory courses.
Or you are going to begin a research project. These projects have a definitive start and end but do not repeat. If you are building a plan for this type of project, I recommend adding one step at the beginning. Take the time to visualize, write down and clarify your big picture goals for the project. How does the final result look? Get into the feelings of it - does it simplify your life? Do you feel proud presenting your work at a national conference? Take the extra time to define the "why" and make it a part of your project plan.
Recurring Tasks
I am not sure about you, but I need reminders for everything. So even simple tasks every month or every three months get put into my system. It frees up mental space for me and lets me let go of the responsibility of remembering.
Using a Project Plan as a Nurse Educator
While there are entire certifications and various courses on project management, a simple project plan for your semester can be the key to unlocking more free time, creative energy and mental bandwidth. Start by creating a list of tasks, organizing them into categories and finally putting them into a system that will help you to manage your workload. This plan can then be reused, edited and built upon every semester. It will just get better with time.
Looking for more active learning ideas?
There are practical, easy-to-implement activities at the Idea Bank (a blog with great articles 😉)
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