Priscilla Okunji, Ph.D.
January 2012

Congratulations to Dr. Priscilla Okunji, an instructor in the Division of Nursing and winner of CETLA’s 2011 Teaching with Technology Award! Judges from the Teaching, Learning, and Technology (TLT) Committee recently honored Dr. Okunji for her innovative contributions to teaching and learning on campus and online.  (Click here to read Dr. Okunji’s winning application.) 

Dr. Okunji’s interest in teaching nursing with technology stems from her expertise and experience in Nursing, Microbiology, and Informatics.  In addition to Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Medical Microbiology, she holds post-graduate degrees in Education and Nursing Informatics.  Board-certified in Medical Surgical Nursing, she has served in managerial positions such as Clinical Coordinator and Director for Nursing Education and Quality Assurance.  The recipient of a Technology Faculty Development Fellowship from Pittsburgh University, she has become an invaluable faculty development resource for her Howard colleagues as they strive to integrate technology more extensively and more effectively into their teaching.

For example, Dr. Okunji has overseen the development of the RN to BSN distance-learning program in the Division of Nursing.  She has mentored other instructors in the program and has developed orientation and program evaluation tools.  Moreover, in her own online Informatics and Technology class, she says, she has used Blackboard’s collaborative tools “to develop creative learning activities that can enhance critical thinking and safe practices in clinical decision-making.”  So far her efforts and those of her colleagues have been paying off:  Her statistical analysis of data from the RN to BSN program reveals significant student satisfaction with the quality of career preparation and job enhancement as well as the level of faculty dedication and accessibility.  Indeed, one student observed in a program evaluation, “It is an innovative step and prepares us for the real world, which is progressing rapidly from paper based to information technology.”

One of the most successful technology strategies Dr. Okunji has adopted is the integration of student-produced videos in her face-to-face Leadership and Management course. Last year, Dr. Okunji helped her students practice delegation, collaboration, interpersonal, and organizational skills via group video projects. She showed her students how to produce a series of skits in which they "acted out" how they would resolve clinical dilemmas. Then she uploaded the videos to YouTube. (Click here to watch.) The skits focus on a variety of issues that require leadership and management skills—issues such as how to proceed if a nurse becomes chemically dependent, how to respond if a client asks a nurse to perform euthanasia, how to handle complaints from a patient's relative, and how to resolve disputes between nurses. As the videos reveal, the projects engaged students in "real-world" critical thinking. (Click here to find out how Dr. Okunji organized the video projects.)

So where does Dr. Okunji go from here?  Higher!  Now she says she is interested in “transforming teaching and learning in the 21st century through emerging informatics, a 3D virtual classroom with telehealth, to create a powerful and enviable nursing education at Howard University’s Division of Nursing.”