Methods: The databases ProQuest, Cinahl Complete, Sage Premier, PubMed, and the Cochrane library were searched with the key words: Time-on-Task, credit load, instructional design, cognitive load, student workload, curriculum, and content overload. The search was limited to the English language, the last five years, higher education, and peer reviewer content.
Findings/Results: Nursing education is typically structured around credit hours. Student learning in class, online or face-to-face, is calculated as 1 credit hour = 1 faculty directed hour per 15 weeks + 2 student directed hours or 45 hours of work per week and 6.4 hours for a 7-week accelerated course. Failing to pay attention to the amount of work students will have to complete in and out of class can lead to overloading students and set them up for failure. Even when students complete the work given, cognitive and physical overload inhibits their ability to reflect, retain the information and apply the information to clinical thinking and problem-solving.
Principles of instructional design state that instructional activities directly influence students’ learning. Students’ brains must be able to accept information, translate it to understand and then move it to memory for later application. Typical strategies emphasize use of short-term memory, which prohibits students getting to deep learning, automation and muscle memory.
Time-on-task is the measure of the amount of time that students spend on learning exercises. Strategic use of measuring time-on-task in courses can assist faculty and program leaders in improving teaching and learning effectiveness. Educators must consider factors such as content readability, preparation time, motivation towards engagement and task difficulty. Faculty members can be supported by having set benchmarks to guide learning activity creation and approved metrics, based on scholarly evidence, to assess adherence.
Evaluation of Methodology and Data: Metric setting using time-to-task is limited in nursing literature. A literature review is needed to confirm usefulness of practices of today’s educators. Instead of overwhelming our students with tasks and information, we, as educators, must find a way to make the learning manageable, meaningful and engaging. Going to the literature for time-on-task will be helpful for educating our future nurses.
Implications for Nursing Education/Conclusion: The goal of nursing education is to develop professional nurses of tomorrow. It becomes difficult to accomplish this task when the learners of today are so varied and different from those that came before them. Educators must be cognizant of the realities of barriers to nursing education. If educators can facilitate learning that is manageable and engaging the learner will be interested and successful in learning. Educators need to consider not just the tasks on hand, but the time it takes to complete the tasks. Learners today desire a more meaningful, time cognizant format to learning.