Tailoring a diabetes nursing elective course to millennial students.

Tailoring classroom teaching to millennial college students who have grown up as active learners is challenging. Interactive, collaborative teaching methods may be effective with such learners. An innovative class using Diabetes Conversation Maps, a patient self-management tool, was taught as an elective course. Students were assigned the role of a person who received a diagnosis of diabetes; the role included the person's specific age, gender, ethnicity, medication regimen, and predominant emotion. Students were expected to complete the assigned readings to enable them to role-play during five Conversation Map sessions. An updated, modified version of the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center's Brief Diabetes Knowledge Test was used to evaluate knowledge in a pretest-posttest format. The new teaching method resulted in an increased knowledge of diabetes and patient education techniques, as well as high student satisfaction.