Teaching Learning Strategies for Today's Nursing Students

An Abstract

Nurses require excellent problem-solving, analytic, creative and other higher order thinking sills. The purpose of this study was to identify the best teaching learning strategies to prepare today's students for the health care needs of tomorrow's clients.

This study was guide by Bruner's constructivist learning theory where learning is an active processes whereby the leaner selects information and develops his/her own cognitive structure. The investigators used this theory in developing a plan to assess the best teaching learning strategies for their program of study.

Gaining approval by the institutional IRB, consents were obtained by both students and faculty for focused group discussions regarding teaching learning strategies. The nursing department collaborated with another department experienced in focus group discussions to ensure objectivity. One hour focus groups were held with each of the following groups, undergraduates, graduates, returning RNs and faculty. Thematic analysis was performed on the recorded focus groups. The analysis was discussed with the faculty and all faculty were to integrate the findings into their courses. After one year the faculty reported back to the researchers their evaluation of the integration of the strategies into their courses.

Thematic analysis indicated several positive (caring, role modeling, experiential, etc.) strategies along with several negative (lack of technology, work overload, anger, etc.)  Interestingly faculty and students differed frequently in their perceptions of positive and negative teaching learning strategies.  Follow up reports from the faculty indicated several new strategies had been tried in their classes with some positive results.