Student Satisfaction Related to Basic Civility Strategies Implemented in an Entry Level Nursing Course

Friday, March 27, 2020

Sandra Rogers, PhD, MBA, BSN
Department of Nursing, Marymount University, Arlington, VA, USA

Purpose:

An increase in uncivil student behavior in the classroom has been witnessed by instructors in higher education over recent years. These uncivil behaviors include, but are not limited to, students arriving late to class, playing on their phones or laptops during class, and being disrespectful to their instructors and classmates. Incivility in the classroom can interfere with teaching and learning and therefore needs to be managed. Classroom management can be described as the process by which teachers create and maintain appropriate behavior of students while overseeing their interactions and learning. Effective classroom management promotes a learning environment by maintaining the students' attention, keeping them focused on the task at hand, and being productive academically during class (Clark, 2017).

Having an understanding of the problem of incivility and addressing it by implementing effective classroom management strategies is crucial for instructors in higher education. Basic civility building strategies include setting ground rules, demonstrating immediacy, and normalizing feedback (Donathan & Hanks, 2017). Overall, this includes developing an environment of trust and transparency in the classroom.

The literature has also shown the importance of building civility in nursing education. Disruptive, uncivil behaviors in the classroom have been linked to uncivil clinical behaviors as well, which can result in less than favorable patient outcomes (Dang, Bae, Karlowicz, & Kim, 2016). It is vital that uncivil behavior be addressed in nursing programs before the behavior has a chance to permeate the nursing workforce environment.

The purpose of this descriptive study is to explore student satisfaction related to basic civility strategies implemented in an entry level nursing course classroom by measuring the satisfaction and exploring the comments from student course evaluation data while comparing a semester where strategies were implemented in the classroom (n=27) with a prior semester in the same course where they were not utilized (n=28).

Methods:

This descriptive study will explore nursing student satisfaction related to implementation of basic civility strategies in the classroom by comparing student course evaluation data and comments from a semester where strategies were implemented (n=27) to the same course in a prior semester in which civility strategies were not utilized (n=28).

Results:

To Be Determined

Conclusion:

To Be Determined