Leaderless organization: active learning strategy in a concept-based curriculum.

The Institute of Medicine’s report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (2010), calls for new approaches in nursing education, including developing curricula to teach fundamental concepts that can be applied in a variety of situations. Concept-based teaching as a pedagogy focuses student learning on a core set of concepts relevant to nursing, such as perfusion, pain, coping, or glucose regulation. By gaining a deep understanding of key concepts, students are able to recognize recurring characteristics and apply them to a wide variety of clinical situations (Giddens, 2013). This article reports an active learning activity designed by undergraduate faculty (H.V.N.-B., D.M.L.), who teach from a concept-based curriculum, as an innovative way to deliver educational content from a concept-based pedagogy.