Professional Development for Nursing Faculty: Assessing Transfer of Learning into Practice

Nurse educators often attend faculty development conferences to learn new strategies and information about the state of nursing education evidence and practice. Yet, very little evidence has been generated about the ability of nurse educators to transfer the new knowledge into their nursing education practice. The authors conducted a survey at a professional education conference for nurse educators to obtain baseline data (N = 145), then followed up with surveys at 90 and 180 days after the conference to determine if the learning that occurred at the continuing education event was transferred into practice. The learner and environmental characteristics that were seen as facilitators and barriers to the process of learning transfer were also examined. The results showed that the learning did transfer into educational practice and that the learner and environmental characteristics had marked influence in the transfer of learning process.