Project Team
- Charlene Ronquillo, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Development (Lead Applicant)
- Lindsay Burton PhD Candidate Nursing, FHSD
- Kathryn Douglas- Campbell Manager, Strategic and Academic Initiatives FHSD
- Clare Harvey Professor, Director Nursing, FHSD
- Ramon Lawrence Professor, Department Head Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics
- Taylor Munro MSN student (course based); Clinical Education Manager Nursing, FHSD Interior Health Authority
- Josephine Nanyonjo, MSN student (thesis) Nursing, FHSD
- Kathy Rush Professor, Graduate Program Coordinator Nursing, FHSD
- Ryan Wilson Assistant Professor of Teaching, Assistant Director Nursing, FHSD
Themes
- Artificial Intelligence
- Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
- Experiential Learning
Year
2027
About the Project
Graduate nursing students, often mid to late career professionals, face significant hurdles transitioning back to formal academia that traditional academic structures are often ill-equipped to address. Students often face a steep learning curve in the attempt to master the “languages” of research, academic terminology, and philosophical underpinnings of science, all while navigating the unwritten norms of academic culture.
Approaches relying on individual faculty mentorship cannot scale to meet growing enrollment demands or provide 24/7 support sometimes needed by students juggling full-time employment and family responsibilities.
The LANTERN project (Learning and AI Navigation for Transformative Education and Research in Nursing) addresses the unique needs of graduate nursing students by leveraging the UBCO HelpMe platform to develop educator-designed and -controlled AI agent ensemble to foster development of critical thinking through Socratic dialogue, rather than directly providing answers.
We will develop and implement four specialized LANTERN-AI agents trained on curated materials from the nursing graduate curriculum, reducing hallucination risks, and providing access to on-demand personalized support, targeting key friction points:
- Research Foundations: Statistics, research methods and terminology, philosophy of science, critical appraisal
- Scholarly Communication: Literature synthesis, scientific writing, oral presentations
- Grantsmanship: Grant structure, funder alignment, budget justification, reviewer perspective
- Academic Navigator: Hidden curriculum, mentorship, career planning
By combining evidence-based pedagogy with technology integration, LANTERN transforms graduate nursing education from isolated struggle into a supported, collaborative journey and directly advances UBC’s Strategic Directions 2025-2030 and UBCO’s Outlook 2040 vision to establish UBCO Nursing as a destination of choice for graduate students.