scholarly journals Creating a writing course to improve the writing self-efficacy of graduate nursing students

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa B. Robinson ◽  
Mary Bishop

Objective: Contemporary advanced professional nursing requires the ability to communicate effectively in written and oral forms. Many registered nurses enter graduate nursing school with experience writing in medical records but with no experience writing scholarly papers or writing for publication. This article describes the development, implementation and evaluation of a writing course developed in an online graduate nursing program in the southeastern United States. The goal of this research was to determine if graduate nursing students’ writing self-efficacy increased after the completion of a newly developed one-credit online writing course.Methods: Fifty-three first-semester graduate nursing students participated in a 16-week online asynchronous writing course developed at a school of nursing. The course instructors designed writing experiences with the goal of increasing writing competency. The faculty defined writing competence as achieving mastery of the necessary writing skills to produce an organized, logical, understandable message containing the effective use of language, grammar, and punctuation.Results: The students’ writing self-efficacy increased significantly from pretest and posttest. The results revealed a significant increase in self efficacy scores with the second administration of the tool. The mean of the 20-question Likert scale pretest was 70.59. Results obtained after the conclusion of the course resulted in a mean of 80.12. The finding of a mean increase of 9.529 was found to be statistically significant.Conclusions: The information from this research can be used to develop effective strategies to support online graduate students with their writing skills. This experience highlights the fact that we cannot leave the development of academic writing to chance. Achieving academic writing success requires structured instruction, practice and frequent feedback from faculty who have the passion for and expertise in scholarly writing.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Annette Ferguson ◽  
Natalie Perry

Clinical instructors play a significant role in the development of safe and competent nursing students. When nurses beginning their career as a clinical instructor, a substantial gap in knowledge can existence in the expectations of this new role. A deficiency of formal education in nursing education or orientation to this position can lead to a lack of self-efficacy and knowledge among clinical instructors. Research supports that a formal orientation and training increases feelings of self-efficacy among clinical instructors. The purpose of this study was to evaluate an online educational program on clinical instructor’s knowledge and self-efficacy towards teaching in a pre-licensure bachelors of science in nursing program. A pre-test/post-test design was utilized to assess changes in knowledge and self-efficacy immediately before and after the intervention for ten clinical instructors. Directly following the training, knowledge scores were measured with a statically significant result. In addition, immediately after the training and three months after the training, self-efficacy scores were measured and found to be statically significantly. In conclusion, the educational intervention was found to be statistically significant in improving the knowledge and self-efficacy scores among clinical instructors in the program as evidenced by the pre-test/post-tests results. This program was cost-effective to implement as there was no cost to the school of nursing or clinical instructors. The instructors could complete the online training from any location that had internet access and during any time of the day or night at their convenience.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 381-402
Author(s):  
Åsa Mickwitz ◽  
Marja Suojala

Abstract High self-efficacy beliefs and effective self-regulatory strategies are increasingly important in academic settings, and especially in developing academic writing skills. This article deals with how students develop academic writing skills in two different pedagogical settings (as autonomous learners and in a traditional learning environment), and how this is associated with the students’ self-regulatory strategies and self-efficacy beliefs. In the study, self-regulatory skills referred to the ability to take charge of, manage and organize the learning process, while self-efficacy beliefs were defined as the strength of students’ confidence to accomplish an extensive task and sense of succeeding. The method was quantitative, including some qualitative elements, and data was elicited through a survey answered by 150 students, after they had attended courses in academic writing. The survey consisted of 1 open-ended question and 16 multiple-choice questions (a five-point Likert scale). The data was analyzed using SPSS. The results show that self-regulatory skills and self-efficacy beliefs have a greater impact on learning academic writing skills in traditional learning settings than in learning settings where the students are supposed to work more independently, and where teacher support is not available to the same extent.


2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-94
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Newton ◽  
Margaret Harris ◽  
Laura Pittiglio

Prelicensure nursing students often have difficulty performing medication calculations (MCs). Faculty at one baccalaureate nursing program wanted to use nursing theory to guide the development of a teaching–learning approach related to MC’s. Finding little theory related to the topic of MCs, a constructivist-based teaching–learning approach was used instead. The purpose of the study was to assess whether nursing students who received an MC review class that used a teaching–learning approach based on constructivist philosophy had better results on an MC examination than students who received their review via traditional teaching–learning methods. The study participants consisted of two cohorts of first-semester junior-level nursing students from one university-based school of nursing in the Midwestern United States. The results indicated that students in the simulation review class had higher mean scores on an MC examination than students who received their review via more traditional means. Teaching–learning strategies related to MCs based on constructivist philosophy have the potential to improve student learning outcomes, but more research is needed before middle-range theory related to this critically important area of nursing education can be developed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Misa Mi ◽  
Cheryl Riley-Doucet

Objective – This study aimed to investigate the relationships among health professions students’ lifelong learning orientation, self-assessed information skills, and information self-efficacy. Methods – This was a descriptive study with a cross-sectional research design. Participants included 850 nursing students and 325 medical students. A total of 419 students responded to a survey questionnaire that was comprised of 3 parts: demographic information, the Jefferson Scale of Lifelong Learning (JeffSLL-HPS), and an information self-efficacy scale. Results – Findings of the study show a significant correlation between students’ lifelong learning orientation and information self-efficacy. Average JeffSLL-HPS total scores for undergraduate nursing students (M = 41.84) were significantly lower than the scores for graduate nursing students (M = 46.20). Average information self-efficacy total scores were significantly lower for undergraduate nursing students (M = 63.34) than the scores for graduate nursing students (M = 65.97). There were no significant differences among cohorts of medical students for JeffSLL-HPS total scores. However, for information self-efficacy, first year medical students (M = 55.62) and second year medical students (M = 58.00) had significantly lower scores than third/fourth year students (M = 64.42). Conclusion – Findings from the study suggest implications for librarians seeking ways to advance the value and utility of information literacy instruction in educational curricula. As such instruction has the potential to lead to high levels of information self-efficacy associated with lifelong learning; various strategies could be developed and incorporated into the instruction to cultivate students’ information self-efficacy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Mark Feltham ◽  
Mary Anne Krahn

In this essay, we tell the story of how a team of English and nursing professors came together to develop curriculum for a mandatory first-semester writing course in the collaborative Bachelor of Science, Nursing (BScN) at Fanshawe College and Western University, both in London, Ontario. The discussion focuses on the implementation of the course at the Fanshawe site. Following a review of literature that has informed our thinking about writing in nursing, we discuss how the team, consisting of both English/writing and nursing faculty, solved curriculum problems to develop an effective course. We also look forward to areas for future development.


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