NURS 8544 Week 5 Active Learning Design Example

Course	NURS 8544 Strategies for Teaching Innovations in Nursing Education
Week	Week 5
Paper type	Active learning session design
Length	About 1,140 words, 7 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Walden University
Program	Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for NURS 8544 Week 5

Two Releases of One Patient: A Fifty-Minute Active Learning Design for Reading a Steady Saturation on Rising Oxygen, With Prompts and Predicted Wrong Answers

Student Name

College of Nursing, Walden University

NURS 8544: Strategies for Teaching Innovations in Nursing Education

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe title names the session's length, its structure and the two features that make it usable by another teacher, the scripted prompts and the predicted errors.

Two Releases of One Patient: A Fifty-Minute Active Learning Design for Reading a Steady Saturation on Rising Oxygen, With Prompts and Predicted Wrong Answers

Objectives

By the end of the session, learners will be able to (a) identify a pattern of change across a series of vital signs when the oxygen saturation stays within normal limits, (b) explain why a stable saturation on rising oxygen indicates worsening rather than stable oxygenation and (c) state the next nursing action and the information that would confirm the explanation. The objectives appear only here. The rest of the document is meant to show how each one is served.

The session is planned for a cohort of thirty learners in their second year of a composite two-year nursing program, during the adult health course. It follows the learner analysis, which found that learners recall normal ranges well but struggle to reason about relationships between values. Active learning was chosen because learners who work through problems in class perform better on later exams than those who listen to the same content (Freeman et al., 2014), and because the reasoning this session targets is best practiced rather than described.

Structure and Materials

Learners work in groups of three, assigned in advance so that each group mixes learners with different entry-probe results. Each group receives one printed case sheet and one response card. The instructor has the second release of the case in a sealed envelope for each group. Total time is fifty minutes: five for setup, fifteen for the first release, fifteen for the second, ten for whole-class discussion of predicted wrong answers and five for an individual exit question.

Case Text, First Release

Learners receive the following text exactly as written:

Mrs. Alvarez is 74 years old and was admitted two days ago with community-acquired pneumonia. You receive her at 0700. Night shift reports she "needed a little more oxygen but her sats stayed good." Vital signs charted overnight are below. She is drowsy but answers questions.

2300: temperature 38.1 C, heart rate 88, respiratory rate 20, blood pressure 132/78, oxygen saturation 95% on 2 L/min by nasal cannula. 0300: temperature 38.3 C, heart rate 97, respiratory rate 24, blood pressure 130/76, oxygen saturation 94% on 3 L/min. 0600: temperature 38.4 C, heart rate 106, respiratory rate 27, blood pressure 128/74, oxygen saturation 94% on 4 L/min.

Groups record their answers to the first two prompts on the response card.

What this page is doingGiving the case text in full, with the exact values, lets another instructor run the session without rewriting it, which is the test of a usable design.

Discussion Prompts

Prompt 1 (first release): "Look at the oxygen saturation on its own at each time. Now look at the oxygen flow beside it. What is happening to how much help she needs to keep that number?" Intended answer: the saturation looks stable, but it is being held there by a flow that has doubled, while the respiratory and heart rates climb. The prompt deliberately separates the single-value reading from the reading of the value together with what it costs to maintain.

Prompt 2 (first release): "Name one process that could produce all of these changes together. What else would you want to know?" Intended answer: worsening pneumonia with rising work of breathing and possible sepsis, with a request for a respiratory assessment, mental status compared with yesterday, a blood gas if ordered and the most recent chest imaging and white cell count.

Prompt 3 (second release): After fifteen minutes, groups open the envelope: "At 0730 Mrs. Alvarez is using her neck muscles to breathe and speaks in three-word phrases. Respiratory rate 32, heart rate 114, oxygen saturation 91% on 5 L/min. She is harder to rouse than at 0700." Prompt: "Does this change your explanation? What would you do in the next ten minutes, and whom would you call?" Intended answer: she is in respiratory failure or heading toward it; the right move is to activate the rapid response team and report the overnight trend in oxygen need, not only the current saturation. Aggregate early warning scores exist precisely because a single reassuring value can hide a worsening patient, and they count supplemental oxygen as a sign of illness in its own right (Royal College of Physicians, 2017).

Prompt 4 (second release): "The night nurse charted every set of values and each saturation was in range. What would have needed to happen for this to be recognized at 0300?" Intended answer: someone reading the saturation together with the oxygen flow and the respiratory rate, and treating a rising oxygen requirement as a finding rather than a fix.

Predicted Wrong Answers and Responses

Wrong answer 1: "Her saturation is normal, so she is oxygenating well." This reveals the misconception, found in the learner analysis, that saturation shows how much oxygen the patient has. The instructor asks the group what the saturation would be at 0600 if the flow had been left at 2 L/min, and what that tells them about her lungs.

Wrong answer 2: "Turn the oxygen up and recheck in an hour." This reveals the belief that more oxygen is always the answer to deterioration. The instructor agrees that oxygen may be needed, then asks what turning it up does to the problem causing the rising respiratory rate and drowsiness, and who should know that her requirement has more than doubled.

Wrong answer 3: "The fever explains the heart rate, so this is expected with pneumonia." This reveals a tendency to attach each abnormal value to a familiar explanation one at a time. The instructor asks whether fever explains the oxygen requirement and the drowsiness as well, and what the values look like when read as one picture.

Each wrong answer is discussed with the whole class in the last part of the session, without naming the group that gave it. Discussing errors this way shows learners that the mistakes are predictable and common, which makes them easier to examine. Misconceptions held with confidence tend to survive explanation and give way only when learners see them produce a wrong prediction (Ambrose et al., 2010), which is why each response asks a question rather than supplying the answer.

What this page is doingThis section is what separates a design from a description: it anticipates how the session will go wrong and gives the instructor the next sentence to say.

Exit Question and Transition

The single transition sentence between the second release and whole-class discussion is: "Before we compare answers, write down the one value you would have flagged first, and when." Each learner then answers one individual exit question on paper: "A patient's oxygen saturation is 95% at 0800 and 95% at 1400, but the oxygen flow has gone from 1 L/min to 4 L/min. What do you do, and why?" Responses are read after class to see whether learners now read saturation alongside the support needed to maintain it.

The exit question uses new values so that it tests transfer of this reading rather than memory of the case. If fewer than two thirds of learners mention the rising oxygen requirement, the next session will begin with a second, shorter case before moving on.

References

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. Jossey-Bass.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410-8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111

Royal College of Physicians. (2017). National Early Warning Score (NEWS) 2: Standardising the assessment of acute-illness severity in the NHS.

What the NURS 8544 Week 5 instructions ask for

Count on this design document to deliver the actual session: the words learners read, the prompts they answer and what the teacher does when they answer wrongly. Several pages are usual. Begin with objectives, then show groupings, materials and timing. Write the case or problem text exactly as learners will receive it, and write each prompt in full with the answer it is meant to draw. Predict the wrong answers learners are likely to give, say what each reveals and script a response. Specify the transitions between phases and end with a way to check learning, such as an exit question that tests transfer rather than recall.

Inside the NURS 8544 Week 5 example

Objectives and the target cohort open the document, with Freeman and colleagues supporting active learning. A structure section sets groups of three, materials and a five-part timing plan. The first release presents Mrs. Alvarez's overnight vital signs with oxygen flow beside each saturation. Four prompts follow, each with its intended answer; the third opens a second release in which she becomes harder to rouse, and the NEWS2 report explains why supplemental oxygen counts as a sign of illness. Three predicted wrong answers are listed with the instructor's question for each, and Ambrose and colleagues explain why questions work better than corrections. The final section gives the transition sentence and an exit question with new values.

Reading the NURS 8544 Week 5 rubric

Faculty grading a design document generally look for alignment with objectives, completeness of the materials, anticipation of learner difficulty and a usable check on learning. A design that includes exact case text and prompts scores higher than one describing them. Predicting wrong answers and preparing responses is often what separates the strongest submissions. Credit is given when the activity requires learners to do the thinking the objectives name. An exit question earns more when it tests transfer with new data. Evidence for the chosen approach, clear timing and APA style complete the grade. Objectives stated once, with the rest of the document serving as evidence that they are met, read as more disciplined than objectives repeated in every section.

NURS 8544 Week 5 help: mistakes that cost marks

Active learning designs often describe what will happen instead of providing the material, so nobody else could run the session. Another problem is prompts that can be answered by recall, which defeats the point. Some designs ignore what learners will get wrong, leaving the instructor to improvise. Write your case and prompts first, test them on a colleague and list the wrong answers you hear. Our writers can prepare a full session design for the topic your section assigns, with case text, prompts and predicted errors. Give every prompt its intended answer in writing, because a colleague running the session needs to know what a good response sounds like. Keep the exit question short and change its values so it cannot be answered from memory of the case.

Get a NURS 8544 Week 5 example written to your instructions

Send the prompt, the rubric, the length of the session and the content it has to cover, and a Week 5 design example comes back with prompts, case text and predicted errors written out in full. The first custom sample is free and arrives within 24 to 48 hours. Learners in the example are invented rather than drawn from any group you have actually taught.

More NURS 8544 papers and DNP samples

NURS 8544 Week 5 questions, answered

Does a design like this have to be delivered?

Not in most sections, and the prompt will say if delivery is expected later in the term. The Assignment is graded as a document, which is why the wording of the learner facing material carries so much of it. Where a section does pair the design with a delivery, the artifact still stands alone and is usually submitted before anyone has run it.

How much detail is too much?

The working test is whether a colleague could run the session without asking a question. Detail past that point starts costing clarity, and appendices of background material rarely earn anything at all. What almost never counts as excessive is the exact wording of prompts and cases, since that is the one layer a rubric can genuinely judge.

Can the same case be used for a later week?

Sections building a whole term around one design expect exactly that, and reusing the case makes the later alignment work easier to follow. Where the weeks stand independent, a fresh case avoids any impression that one artifact is being resubmitted. Either way the design has to stand alone, since a grader may not be reading the sequence.

Where can I find a free NURS 8544 Week 5 sample paper?

This page carries the full session design above, case text, prompts and predicted errors included, open to read free.

What do the NURS 8544 Week 5 prompts teach learners to notice?

That a steady saturation held up by a rising oxygen flow signals worsening oxygenation, so saturation has to be read together with the support it needs and the respiratory rate.