Listen to this article.
Voiced by Amazon Polly

The NCSBN is launching the Next Generation NCLEX (NGN) on April 1, 2023. NGN is fostering a new way of testing clinical judgment. With NGN upon us, nurse educators must ensure now, more than ever, that our students are learning the content and grasping the concepts we teach. We need sticky learning! Sticky learning is what I call true learning or deep learning, not just surface learning. One way to make learning sticky is through the use of visual aids. 

Why Multimedia Matters in Nursing Education

You can’t open a nursing textbook without seeing lots of images, charts, and graphs. Why? Complex content requires simplified explanations. One of the best ways to simplify complex content is through visuals. The nursing curriculum involves:

  • Learning knowledge and skills.
  • Applying learned knowledge and skills.
  • Ultimately making clinical judgments about patient care.

Nursing is a hands-on profession full of procedures, interactions, and memorization.

Nursing content is made for the use of visuals!

How Visuals Help Students Pass the NCLEX

The most important thing for educators to remember is that the mode of instruction must match the content being taught. Only include visuals when they simplify, complement, and/or provide a memorization cue for the content. When providing visuals, you should provide both the words and the visuals. This maximizes the impact on the student and follows Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia , which explains that students learn better from words and visuals than from words alone. There are many reasons to use visual aids.

  1. Pictures are more easily processed in the brain than words.
  2. Images cue memories.
  3. Visuals can simplify complex processes.
  4. Images can decrease boredom and increase engagement.
  5. Most students prefer images to words.
See also
Preparing an End of Life Care Plan: Nurses Should Lead the Way

The Power of Pairing Words and Images

The human brain can process pictures more quickly and easily than words. Think back to when you were a child learning to speak. You weren’t taught the alphabet and how to read first. Instead, you were taught what objects were by being shown the actual object or pictures of the object. Look at the example below. Which is easier to process and remember?

How Visuals Help Students Pass the NCLEX

 Students often remember high-quality clinical images and medical illustrations more than text. The connection between the visual and the text makes the experience more meaningful and likely to be stored in long-term memory. Have you ever forgotten some of the text of something you read but remembered the image explaining the text, including exactly where it was located on the page? This is because visuals are easier to learn and quicker to cue memories. The combination of text and visuals provide more of an opportunity for the reader to make connections and engage in deeper learning.

Making the Complex Simple

The right visuals can break down and simplify complex processes. For example, a flow chart that simplifies diabetic ketoacidosis with arrows indicating what happens next provides an image for the brain to remember and retrieve than long paragraphs of text more easily. It also organizes the information and offers simplified explanations for easier processing. See the example below.

How Visuals Help Students Pass the NCLEX

Why Students Prefer Visuals

Visuals can help with boredom and increase engagement. When students open a reading assignment and see visuals instead of texts, from my experience, nursing students feel less dread in engaging with the content. Visuals are less daunting and provide more motivation to engage than text. Breaking up text with good visuals also decreases the likelihood of getting bored. Students like visuals! 

See also
Nurse of the Week Redux: Sandra Lindsay Poised to Replace Elvis as US Vaccination Icon

Of course, surveys and literature may tell us that students do not always know what is best for them when it comes to learning, but we can’t completely ignore what they like. The right visuals give the students what they want and help them learn!

Finally, visuals cause a stronger and faster reaction than words. Because emotions and memories are created in the same part of the brain, emotional responses can influence information retention. Remember Maya Angelou’s quote: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This rings true for learning also. Visuals can trigger memories that trigger emotions—and therefore increase retention. During the closures caused by the pandemic, online learning based on strong visuals helped bridge the gaps for nursing students who cannot do internships, volunteer, or complete their clinical rotations. As these students prepare for NGN, continuing to provide visually driven online learning as an extra resource will shift the focus from the soft skills provided by clinical rotations to the hard skills that every nurse will need to know to thrive in the workplace. The hard skills students learn from visual eLearning will give them the “hands-on” experience they need to integrate successfully into the clinical setting—even before they leave the classroom.

Maria Flores Harris
Latest posts by Maria Flores Harris (see all)
See also
Nursing Side Gigs: Love and Joye Baked Goods
Share This