The NEST Toolkit
Practical tools for translating adaptive learning and coaching principles into everyday clinical teaching.
The NEST Toolkit provides educators with practical, evidence-informed resources for incorporating learner agency, critical thinking, reflection, targeted feedback, and collaborative goal setting into brief clinical teaching encounters.
Grounded in the Master Adaptive Learner (MAL) framework, coaching principles, and competency-based medical education, NEST helps bridge the gap between educational theory and the realities of workplace teaching.
New to NEST? Start with the Overview and Framework below.
Start Here
NEST Overview
A one-page introduction to NEST and the educational problem it was designed to address.
Learn how NEST translates established principles of adaptive learning and coaching into a structured, repeatable approach for everyday clinical teaching.
View NEST Overview
NEST Framework & Workflow
See how NEST scaffolds the Master Adaptive Learner cycle within a clinical teaching encounter.
This visual maps the four phases of the MAL cycle—Planning, Learning, Assessing, and Adjusting—to the NEST framework:
Name the Need → Explore the Experience → Self-Reflect & Receive Feedback → Target the Next Step
The accompanying workflow shows the key educator and learner behaviors within each phase and how the cycle continues across subsequent learning opportunities.
View NEST Framework
Put NEST into Practice
NEST Faculty Quick Start Guide
A practical guide for using NEST during clinical teaching.
The Quick Start Guide walks faculty through the NEST cycle and provides a simple structure for incorporating learner agency, observation, critical-thinking prompts, reflection, targeted feedback, and collaborative goal setting into routine clinical encounters.
View NEST Quickstart Guide
Sample NEST CARD
See how the framework becomes a point-of-care teaching tool.
NEST teaching cards provide topic-specific learning objectives and prompts that help educators explore learner thinking, support reflection and feedback, and identify an intentional next step.
View Sample Card Front
Interested in Using NEST?
NEST is being explored as an adaptable approach to structured clinical teaching across pediatric and other clinical learning environments.
If you’re interested in:
- piloting NEST in a clinical setting
- adapting NEST resources to another learning environment
- collaborating on educational research
- incorporating NEST into faculty development
- learning more about implementation
I’d love to connect.
Nurture Education Design 