Tuesday, 31 October 2017: 9:20 AM
Despite increasing enrollments in nursing schools across the United States, the number of BSN students who graduate on time is decreasing, as many struggle and fail in the upper division courses. Students forced to repeat nursing classes, or worse, fail out of the BSN program results in a significant loss of time and money and a delay to beginning their professional nursing careers. Decreased numbers of nursing graduates also impacts healthcare access for patients and communities, and strains resources already in place. Research has shown stress and anxiety as factors affecting academic performance; however, there is a significant gap in knowledge concerning students’ self-efficacy (SE) as a factor directly influencing students’ academic performance. The problem examined in this correlational study was the impact of collaborative learning in an innovative classroom setting on Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students’ SE and academic performance. Framed by Bandura’s theory of SE, the research questions examined the relationship between students’ SE scores at the beginning and end of the innovative course, and their end-of-course grade. The sample included 22 students from one upper-division nursing class (N = 22) in an undergraduate-level nursing program in southern United States. Data sources included disaggregated student grades and an anonymous, online survey. Analyses included Chi-square and Pearson’s r correlation of the data. Results indicated SE scores at the end of the course were higher than they were at the beginning of the course, which provided an initial understanding of the impact of the innovative learning environment on BSN students’ academic performance, but were not statistically significant and could not, therefore, disprove the null hypothesis. This study indicates that implementing innovative nursing course designs could increase student active learning, collaboration, self-efficacy, and more successful nursing graduates, which would result in more nurses, and a positive impact on healthcare both locally and nationally.