Effectiveness of an Online Collaborative Inquiry-Based Learning Strategy on Nursing Students' Problem-Solving Ability and Attitude towards Community Health Nursing

Monday, 30 July 2012

Chien-Lin Kuo, RN, PhD
School of Nursing, Fooyin University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Shu Yuan Chang, PhD, RN
Nursing Department, Fooyin University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to understand how a online learning approach was applied in CHN course to increase nursing students’ problem-solving ability.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to understand whether there is a difference between cooperative and individual learning on students’ problem-solving ability and attitude towards CHN.

Purpose: Problem-solving ability is not only the important personal adaptive skills but also the core competence of nurses. The online learning can provide students a flexible and innovative learning environment and facilitate students’ active learning as well. The study attempts to investigate the effects and attitudes on students’ problem-solving ability when online cooperative inquiry-based learning strategy integrated into Community Health Nursing (CHN) course.

Methods: The research samples are 97 undergraduate nursing students from a university in southern Taiwan, assigned to an experiment group and a control group randomly. The experiment group adopted the strategy of guiding instruction and cooperative learning, while the control group adopted the strategy of guiding instruction and individual learning. Meanwhile, these two groups adopted online inquiry-based learning activities for problem solving via a web-search learning environment called Meta-Analyzer. The research tools are composed of Cognitive Style Inventory, Information Literacy Instrument, Problem Solving Tests, and Learning Attitude towards CHN Questionnaire. The quantitative and qualitative data obtained from the questionnaires and individual interviews will be analyzed.

Results: The results will answer the research questions: Is the innovative approach able to increase the students’ problem-solving ability? Is there a difference between cooperative and individual learning strategy on students’ problem-solving ability and attitude towards CHN? As to the aspect of cognitive styles, whether the field-dependent students in experiment group have better problem-solving performance than those in control group?

Conclusion: The research findings can provide some references for nursing educators to apply the information technology in professional course design in order to increase the students’ problem-solving ability and learning effectiveness.