Why is it important to understand how students study? As educators, we look at results from tests and often make assumptions about what a student knows based on the test grade, but a poor grade may instead indicate that a student is not studying in a way most beneficial to that student. How can we help if we don’t understand how that student studied? Human nature leads us to think that everyone thinks like us and studies like we did, but if we look back on our journey through education we would see that other students around us studied very differently.
Dr Susan Sanders, Vice President of Kaplan Nursing, and her Kaplan colleagues performed a qualitative study on how students study in 2011. Their findings are of great benefit to both faculty and students. After the research group collected its data, four student themes emerged:
- “I learn from many resources and methods.”
- “I create order.”
- “I integrate.”
- “I remember content.”
How can we, as faculty, use this information to inform our interactions with students? Let’s look specifically at struggling students.
1) If our struggling students use multiple resources we can help them determine if more is just more, or if it really is better. Have students bring in a list of their resources, and ask them to identify how they use them. Do they just read them, take notes from them, or highlight every word in them? We can also help students determine if the resources they are using are appropriate for the intended outcome. Talk to the students, and evaluate if the “cliff-notes” book they use has the critical thinking links that you are testing; if not, that resource will not prepare them for your tests or evaluations. If you are testing mostly knowledge then texts with lists may be good resources for the student. Students, especially struggling ones, do not know what level of understanding a faculty person is expecting. Sharing with them the hierarchy of learning, what level you test at, and what level you expect them to be at will help them determine useful and appropriate resources. What other ways can we, as faculty, use this information? Please share your ideas below.
2) If students need order to help them study how we can help? One way of helping students organize is by providing bulleted handouts that leave ample space for note taking. This decreases the amount of paper with the same topics they need to have. We can also identify reference pages for students to use to make connections. This is especially helpful to our struggling students who cannot make the connections for themselves yet. Talk to students early in their nursing educational process about how to keep order by using different colored notebooks, using highlighters effectively, and using technology to help maintain order. We sometimes think organization comes naturally, but students who are struggling do not know how to keep track and organize their process. Most campuses have resources to help students with organization of information. Have these experts present in the class, or do a recorded session students can watch outside of class. What other ideas do you have to help students understand the importance of organization in their success? We look forward to ideas and suggestions below.
3) Helping students make connections and integrating knowledge is a good outcome for all our students. One way to help students integrate is to have faculty identify concepts by using different color highlighters in notes, lectures, or case studies. For example, student can mark assessments in yellow and implementations in blue. If a concept based curriculum is used a data point involving the oxygenation concept can be in blue and a discussion point involving cardiac can be in red. Imagine if we could pull the same colors in our lectures or Power Point presentations to help students see the concept connections! This technique enables us to use the concept to map to nursing process in lectures and presentation. What ideas do you have for this concept?
4) Content is so important to students that it was one of the four major themes they identified. In my humble opinion, this one is probably the priority for struggling students. How can faculty help students meet their need to learn content while helping students see that content is only a base? Providing out- of-class quizzes or study sheets that are just content knowledge is a way to help them identify the content they need to use to begin making judgments. When this method is used it must be very clear that content is only the beginning piece of what nurses do. Students need to understand that content is the base and not the end goal. This is a faculty responsibility. Most students do not understand the hierarchy of learning unless we share it with them over and over again.
Most faculty will recognize #4 as a top concern. Is focusing on content the best way for students to become quality care nurses? There is much discussion in the nursing education world about content and how it impacts the quality of nurses we are graduating. The NCSBN does not test content, but instead tests thinking and critical judgment on the NCLEX®. How can we take what students feel is important and help them see that memorization is not the best way to become the best nurse? Would changing how we apply a grade help? What if we changed how we construct a test and stopped having 20 questions just on content, but a test of 15 questions on applying that knowledge? What do you think as a nursing faculty member?
One thought on “How Nursing Students Study: What Educators Need to Know (Part 1)”
I was a nursing student at a community college and they did none of what you suggested for educators to do to help nursing students succeed. All critical thinking will be up to me to learn if I decide to return to that school. All they did was throw alot of material at us and make it as overwhelming as possible. I don’t want it to be easy I am willing to work very hard at becoming a nurse but feel a school is needed that will help me apply critical thinking. Thanks.