Group work: Facilitating the learning of international and domestic undergraduate nursing students

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Author(s)
Shaw, Julie
Mitchell, Creina
Del Fabbro, Letitia
Year published
2015
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Background: Devising innovative strategies to address internationalization is a contemporary challenge for universities. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) project was undertaken to identify issues for international nursing students and their teachers. The findings identified group work as a teaching strategy potentially useful to facilitate international student learning. Methods: The educational intervention of structured group work was planned and implemented in one subject of a Nursing degree. Groups of four to five students were formed with one or two international students per group. Structural support was provided ...
View more >Background: Devising innovative strategies to address internationalization is a contemporary challenge for universities. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) project was undertaken to identify issues for international nursing students and their teachers. The findings identified group work as a teaching strategy potentially useful to facilitate international student learning. Methods: The educational intervention of structured group work was planned and implemented in one subject of a Nursing degree. Groups of four to five students were formed with one or two international students per group. Structural support was provided by the teacher until the student was learning independently, the traditional view of scaffolding. The group work also encouraged students to learn from one another, a contemporary understanding of scaffolding. Evaluation of the group work teaching strategy occurred via anonymous, self-completed student surveys. The student experience data were analysed using descriptive statistical techniques, and free text comments were analysed using content analysis. Results: Over 85% of respondents positively rated the group work experience. Overwhelmingly, students reported that class discussions and sharing nursing experiences positively influenced their learning and facilitated exchange of knowledge about nursing issues from an international perspective. Discussion: This evaluation of a structured group work process supports the use of group work in engaging students in learning, adding to our understanding of purposeful scaffolding as a pathway to enhance learning for both international and domestic students. By explicitly using group work within the curriculum, educators can promote student learning, a scholarly approach to teaching and internationalization of the curriculum.
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View more >Background: Devising innovative strategies to address internationalization is a contemporary challenge for universities. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) project was undertaken to identify issues for international nursing students and their teachers. The findings identified group work as a teaching strategy potentially useful to facilitate international student learning. Methods: The educational intervention of structured group work was planned and implemented in one subject of a Nursing degree. Groups of four to five students were formed with one or two international students per group. Structural support was provided by the teacher until the student was learning independently, the traditional view of scaffolding. The group work also encouraged students to learn from one another, a contemporary understanding of scaffolding. Evaluation of the group work teaching strategy occurred via anonymous, self-completed student surveys. The student experience data were analysed using descriptive statistical techniques, and free text comments were analysed using content analysis. Results: Over 85% of respondents positively rated the group work experience. Overwhelmingly, students reported that class discussions and sharing nursing experiences positively influenced their learning and facilitated exchange of knowledge about nursing issues from an international perspective. Discussion: This evaluation of a structured group work process supports the use of group work in engaging students in learning, adding to our understanding of purposeful scaffolding as a pathway to enhance learning for both international and domestic students. By explicitly using group work within the curriculum, educators can promote student learning, a scholarly approach to teaching and internationalization of the curriculum.
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Journal Title
Education for Health
Volume
28
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2015. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.
Subject
Nursing not elsewhere classified
Medicine, nursing and health curriculum and pedagogy
Specialist studies in education
Curriculum and pedagogy
Public health