A Menu With No Words, a Two-Minute Silence and a Standardized Patient Named Mr. Alvarez: Designing Engaging Activities for a Supported Conversation Module
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
NSG/534: Facilitating Engaged Learning
Week 3 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The school, the students and the activities are a composite written for a model paper.
In Week 2, I designed a blended module that prepares junior nursing students to communicate with adults who have aphasia, with five objectives, an online component, a video analysis and a simulation. This paper designs the activities that will fill that structure. The analysis in Week 1 found that students are anxious, busy and value what they can use the next day, so the activities must be brief, practical and emotionally honest.
What Engagement Means Here
Engagement is often confused with entertainment. For this module, an activity is engaging if it requires students to think, decide or practice, if it connects to a situation they will face on the unit and if it addresses their feelings about that situation. Branch (2009) places the selection of learning activities in the design and development phases, where each activity should be chosen for how it helps learners reach an objective. An activity that is fun but does not move a learner toward an objective is a distraction with good production values.
Activity 1: The Menu With No Words
Objective served: 1, describing how aphasia affects understanding and expression, and the affective aim of reducing students' discomfort by building empathy.
Description: at the start of the online module, students watch a 90-second video in which they are a patient trying to order breakfast from a nurse who speaks an unfamiliar language quickly and shows them a menu printed in an alphabet they cannot read. They must choose what they want by pointing and are then asked two questions: How did it feel? What did the nurse do that helped or made it harder?
Why it should engage: it creates, in a small way, the experience of losing access to language, which is more memorable than a definition. Students' answers become the starting point for the content that follows, so the explanation of receptive and expressive aphasia connects to something they have felt.
Activity 2: A Branching Scenario
Objectives served: 2, identifying barriers and facilitators, and preparation for objective 3.
Description: an interactive scenario in the learning management system follows a nurse, whom the student plays, entering the room of Mr. Alvarez, a 68-year-old man three weeks after a left-hemisphere stroke with nonfluent aphasia, to give his morning medications and ask about his pain. At each of five decision points, the student chooses among three responses, such as asking "Are you in any pain today, and if so where is it and how bad would you say it is?" or pointing to a pain scale while asking "Pain?" and waiting. Each choice plays a short video of Mr. Alvarez's response and gives brief feedback. Poor choices lead to frustration and a missed need; good choices lead to a successful exchange.
Why it should engage: it asks students to make the decisions they will face, shows consequences and allows safe failure. The scenario is short, about 15 minutes, respecting students' time. Segmenting it into decision points also reduces cognitive load, following principles for multimedia learning (Mayer & Moreno, 2003).
Activity 3: Peer Practice Script
Objective served: 3, demonstrating supported conversation techniques.
Description: before the simulation, pairs of students practice for 15 minutes using a script. One student plays a patient with aphasia using a card that describes what they can and cannot do, for example understanding short sentences but unable to find nouns, and must communicate a need such as wanting to call a son. The other uses the techniques. After five minutes, they switch roles. A checklist of techniques guides feedback.
Why it should engage: playing the patient role deepens empathy, practicing with a peer is less frightening than a standardized patient and the checklist gives both students a clear focus.
Activity 4: The Standardized Patient Encounter
Objectives served: 3, 4 and 5.
Description: each student completes a ten-minute morning care encounter with a standardized patient trained to portray Mr. Alvarez consistently, including frustration if spoken to through a family member. The student must explain a procedure, assess pain and find out a simple preference. The speech-language pathologist helped write the patient's script so that his aphasia is realistic. A debriefing of 15 minutes in groups of four follows, and each student then writes a one-page reflection.
Why it should engage: it is as close to the real unit as possible, with a live partner whose responses change with every choice, and the debriefing turns the experience into learning. Communication partner training studies have reported positive changes in partners' skill across many settings (Simmons-Mackie et al., 2016), and practice with feedback is a common feature of those programs.
The Stroke Survivor's Voice
Throughout the online module, short clips from an interview with a stroke survivor with aphasia and his wife, recorded with permission through the rehabilitation unit's peer support program, show what helped and hurt during his hospital stay. He describes staff who "talked over my head" and one nurse who "wrote the word on the whiteboard and waited." These clips connect the techniques to a real person's experience.
Assignments and Accountability
The module includes three assignments that make participation visible without adding heavy grading: completion of the online module with its quiz, the video analysis form and the reflection after the simulation. All are pass or fail. The reflection prompt asks students to name one technique that worked, one moment they felt uncomfortable and one thing they will do differently on the unit.
How the Activities Build on Each Other
The four activities are sequenced so that each prepares for the next. The empathy exercise lowers defensiveness and creates a reason to learn. The branching scenario introduces the techniques through decisions with consequences. Peer practice turns decisions into spoken skill with a partner who is not judging. The standardized patient encounter asks students to use all of it with a stranger, in real time, and the debriefing turns the experience into lessons they can carry to the unit. Removing any one would weaken the others; students who skip the peer practice, for example, meet the standardized patient without ever having said the words aloud.
Addressing Anxiety Directly
The analysis found that students fear saying the wrong thing. The activities respond by making errors safe and expected: the branching scenario lets students choose poorly and see why, peer practice is private and the simulation prebriefing tells students that mistakes are the point. The reflection prompt names discomfort directly, which helps students see that the feeling is normal and manageable.
Innovation and Cost
The module uses existing resources: the learning management system's branching tool, the simulation center's video recording, two standardized patients and the unit's peer support program. The innovation lies in the combination of empathy exercise, branching decisions, peer role reversal and realistic simulation, not in expensive technology.
Conclusion
Four activities, an empathy exercise, a branching scenario, peer role-play and a standardized patient encounter, supported by a stroke survivor's voice, engage students by asking them to feel, decide and practice in situations they will meet on the unit, each tied to a specific objective. Week 4 will evaluate the technologies needed and develop the product.
References
Branch, R. M. (2009). Instructional design: The ADDIE approach. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09506-6
Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43-52. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3801_6
Simmons-Mackie, N., Raymer, A., & Cherney, L. R. (2016). Communication partner training in aphasia: An updated systematic review. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 97(12), 2202-2221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2016.03.023
How this NSG 534 Week 3 example is structured
The NSG/534 description stresses building courses with engaging activities and assignments and creating interesting, innovative materials. This paper defines engagement in terms of learners' active thinking rather than entertainment, then designs each activity in enough detail to build, links it to an objective and explains why it should work for these learners. Students search this week as NSG 534 Week 3, NSG534 Wk 3 or NSG/534 Wk 3; all three are the same assignment.
NSG/534 Week 3 questions, answered
What does NSG/534 Week 3 usually ask for?
The course description stresses engaging activities and assignments. Many sections ask students to design activities for their instructional product that engage learners and serve the objectives.
What makes an activity engaging?
Learners must think and act, not only watch or read: making decisions, solving problems, practicing skills or reflecting on experience, with the activity clearly connected to something they care about.
What is a branching scenario?
An interactive case in which learners make choices and see the consequences, with the story changing depending on what they choose. It lets learners practice decisions safely.
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