Graduated nurses' experiences with baccalaureate thesis writing: A qualitative study

Learning evidence-based practice by writing the bachelor's thesis - A prospective cohort study in undergraduate nursing education

BACKGROUND

Evidence-based practice has been the desirable healthcare standard for decades. To ensure evidence-based healthcare in the future, nursing education curricula must include strategies for teaching evidence-based practice to nursing students. Learning outcomes about evidence-based practice might be incorporated into courses like the bachelor's thesis.

AIM

This study investigates whether writing a bachelor's thesis influences nursing students' practice, skills, and attitudes towards evidence-based practice, and explores whether there are differences between students writing the thesis as a literature study and students conducting empirical studies.

DESIGN

This Nationwide Prospective Cohort Study collects data on students' practice, skills, and attitudes towards evidence-based practice through the Student Evidence-Based Practice Questionnaire and two questions from the Norwegian version of the Evidence-Based Practice profile questionnaire.

PARTICIPANTS

The sample consists of 314 nursing students writing their bachelor's thesis in the last term of their nursing education. The responding students represent all institutions of higher education in Norway.

METHODS

Paired t-tests were used to examine changes in the subscales practice, retrieving/reviewing, sharing/applying, attitudes and total scale for the Student Evidence-Based Practice Questionnaire from before they started to submission of the bachelor's thesis. Linear multiple regression analyses were conducted to explore differences between students writing a literature study and students conducting empirical studies.

RESULTS

The analysis showed that the nursing students significantly increased in the three subscales practice, retrieving/reviewing, and sharing/applying, in addition to the total scale for the questionnaire, while writing the bachelor's thesis. Further, the analysis showed no difference on the scales between the groups of students writing a literature study or conducting an empirical study.

CONCLUSIONS

The results indicate that writing the bachelor's thesis leads to increased learning about evidence-based practice and does not depend on the kind of thesis the students write.

Supervising Undergraduate Nursing Students on Their Bachelor's Thesis. A Qualitative Study

Introduction

The bachelor's thesis (BT) in undergraduate education is often an autonomous and individual assignment. It aims to demonstrate knowledge gained through education, to be an assessment tool, and to give new learning outcomes through working on the thesis. The process of working with the BT most often includes individual supervision. There is an absence of support for teachers supervising undergraduate nursing theses, which includes a lack of national or institutional guidelines, role definitions and research material.

Objective

Given the lack of helpful guidelines, this study aims to explore what the teachers emphasize as important regarding their supervision of nursing students writing their BT.

Methods

The study has a qualitative approach, featuring individual semi-structured interviews with nursing teachers supervising nursing students on the BT. Reflexive thematic analysis is used as the method of analysis.

Results

The analyses resulted in two generated themes, each with two subthemes, describing the patterns the teachers emphasize as important aspects of their supervision of nursing students writing their BT. The themes were "The pedagogical approach to the supervision" and "The advantages of the bachelor's thesis to the nursing profession."

Conclusions

The teachers balanced different roles in the supervision of the students. They wanted the students to grow through challenging them, grounded in a relationship of trust and confidence. They were role models for how to be critical thinkers and incorporated critical thinking as a pedagogical implement in supervision, wanting to raise the students to become nurses who think critically. The teachers sought to combine clinical relevance with academic literacy to secure a new generation of nurses able to be a part of the future development of the profession. They wanted to equip the students with knowledge, skills, and confidence to speak up and communicate nursing. Last, the teachers combined their clinical and academic identities in the supervision of the BT.

ChatGPT for Automated Writing Evaluation in Scholarly Writing Instruction

BACKGROUND

Effective strategies for developing scholarly writing skills in postsecondary nursing students are needed. Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools, such as ChatGPT, for automated writing evaluation (AWE) hold promise for mitigating challenges associated with scholarly writing instruction in nursing education. This article explores the suitability of ChatGPT for AWE in writing instruction.

METHOD

ChatGPT feedback on 42 nursing student texts from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers was assessed. Assessment criteria were derived from recent AWE research.

RESULTS

ChatGPT demonstrated utility as an AWE tool. Its scoring performance demonstrated stricter grading than human raters, related feedback to macro-level writing features, and supported multiple submissions and learner autonomy.

CONCLUSION

Despite concerns surrounding GAI in academia, educators can accelerate the feedback process without increasing their workload, and students can receive individualized feedback by incorporating AWE provided by ChatGPT into the writing process. [J Nurs Educ. 2023;62(12):721-727.].

Service Learning in the Nursing Bachelor Thesis: A Mixed-Methods Study

The Final Degree Project (FDP) is a module that, although intended for the completion of a bachelor thesis (BT), consists of theoretical and clinical teaching. Therefore, introducing service learning (SL) can support student adjustments to the real-world professional role. This study plans to evaluate a teaching innovation project that combines BT and SL through Kirkpatrick's four-level model (reaction, learning, behaviour and results). It takes the form of a convergent parallel mixed-methods design study. The participants were 15 final-year students obtaining a Bachelor of Nursing degree, 4 BT supervising mentors and 4 nurses. At the request of a hospital institution, in their BT, students completed a review of evidence-based nursing protocols. For data collection, the researchers used: an SL questionnaire, student narratives, mentor field diaries and nurse interviews. According to student opinion, the results showed high satisfaction rates (4.44 out of 5), the most developed skills were Independent Work and Information Management, but they signal the need to reinforce the research methodology skills. Finally, positive feedback from all participants is that using SL promotes both the opinion that the BT is useful and also promotes a collaboration between academic and clinical settings.

Escorting Students into Responsibility and Autonomy (ESRA): A Model for Supervising Degree Projects

BACKGROUND

Several models for how to support students and provide them with the skills needed to write their degree projects have been proposed. However, few attempts have been made to present a general model for students' academic work based on reasoning and communication skills rather than memorizing and mimicking their supervisors during their independent degree project.

OBJECTIVE

In the present paper, we propose a well-structured model that assists supervisors in promoting students' responsibility and autonomy, while at the same time maintaining a high level of support.

PRESENTATION

We present a step-by-step protocol based on a partnership model with a contractual style that focuses on students' academic work with their own texts through a process of alternating between abstract and concrete writing. This protocol, which is called the ESRA (Escorting the Students into Responsibility and Autonomy) model, can be utilized regardless of the content, specific aim and scope of the individual student's degree project.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

We argue that this model promotes high levels of engagement and assumption of responsibility among students, while also offering a feasible structure for ensuring the steps to empowerment and autonomy. Use of the ESRA model is suitable when a constructive interaction between students and supervisors is desirable as a tool to achieve the learning outcomes of the degree project. Thus, the proposed model is one step toward giving a new generation of nurses the skills and ability they need to adapt in the changing world of the 21st century and to make promoting health a core mission of their profession.