Evaluating faculties and students satisfaction of a nursing practicum project workshop in Northern Taiwan

Received: 26-Mar-2018 Accepted Date: Apr 06, 2018; Published: 12-Apr-2018

Citation: Liu HY, Kuo CL, Shen MH, et al. Evaluating faculties and students satisfaction of a nursing practicum project workshop in Northern Taiwan. J Nurs Res Pract. 2018;2(2):16-19.

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Abstract

Nursing education has identified in the need for nursing faculties to develop new skills, both in the education and technology. Faculty development is a core process of course development, implementation, and evaluation. Literature has indicated that workshop as one of the effective interventions for faculty development; however, few studies investigate the nursing faculty development, especially in teaching for creativity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the participants’ satisfaction of a training workshop in northern Taiwan. This was a descriptive and cross-sectional survey, and a 21-items questionnaire was used to determine the impact of the workshop on faculty and student satisfaction. Fourteen participants divided into three groups completed the 6-hours activities of the workshop. The results showed that participants were satisfied with the learning experiences from this workshop. All participants rated over 4.0 on a 5-point Likert scale in terms of overall performance of the speaker, course content, class environment and quality of service, and self-evaluation. The workshop could help learners to grow as they “learn by doing” real creative work. It should be offered to nursing educators for better preparation of teaching creativity and innovation. Based on the study findings, the workshop design still need refinement to strength some topics such as product analysis and patent application and to consider longer time intervention.

Keywords

Workshop; Nursing; Teachers; Students

Introduction

Faculty development is an important task for the management of universities, especially for the new mission of a beginning course with the purpose of cultivating faculties to be able to run the new programs or courses. The authors had developed an 18-weeks capstone course for nursing students in 2012, which integrated team-based and project-based learning to help students experiencing the process of producing innovative products to improve the quality of healthcare. In order to share the experiences of course development, we designed a one-day workshop for teacher training and open to nursing students as well. The objective of this workshop was to cultivate the competencies of creativity for producing the innovative products in healthcare.

Steinert et al. systematically reviewed literature from 1980 to 2002 about the effects of faculty development interventions, including workshops, seminar, series, short courses…, and found that participants were highly satisfied with the faculty development programs with increasing their knowledge, positive changes in attitudes and teaching behaviors [1]. However, there are few studies that investigate the nursing faculty development focusing on teaching for creativity, even those who are the important hubs of fulfillment of creativity for teaching. Since the literature has indicated workshop as one of the effective strategies for faculty development, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the participants’ satisfaction of this workshop in northern Taiwan. This study was part of the grant entitled as “Conducting and Evaluating of the Teaching for Creativity Curriculum Module: Industry- Oriented Capstone Course in Healthcare Professionals (II)” (MOST106- 2511-S-255–005) (Liu, 2017 to 2018).

Literature Review

This review of literature was focused on the workshop in nursing and distributed in three domains of Evidence-Based Nursing (EBN), clinical areas, and education. For the studies of EBN, Yeh et al. (2010) evaluated the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of EBN for 191 nurses and found significant improvement after the EBN workshop [2]. Also, 75.65% participants rated 4.0 or higher on a 5-point scale indicating high satisfaction for the workshop. Additionally, Hsieh and Lin conducted one day workshop of EBN for 47 nurses and found their knowledge, skills, and critical thinking abilities were improved significantly, but the attitudes; however, the effect of workshop was temporary [3]. In terms of critical thinking, Chan systematic reviewed critical thinking in nursing education and identified four influencing factors as the culture of students, the roles of educator, non-traditional education system, and friendly education environment as well as the teaching strategies to improve critical thinking including questioning, reflective writing, and case-based interventions [4].

For clinical research studies, Li and Wu (2012) applied the planned behavior theory for a series of hand hygiene workshops to improve hand hygiene compliance of 44 nurses and results showed the rate of hand washing has increased from 58.2% to 85.6%. Additionally, Chen et al. conducted a training project about total knee replacement (TKR) for the perioperative nurses and found after implementation of this project, their knowledge, skills, and attitudes increasing from 55% to 90% [5]. Furthermore, Lee and Kao studied the effect of a simulated radiation therapy skin care workshop for nurses’ (N=34) knowledge, attitudes, and skills and results showed the significant and positive impacts on their learning outcomes [6]. Finally, Zhu et al. conducted a training workshop for 5 home care nurses in Macau in terms of the knowledge and skills on wound care, nasal tube care, foley care and results found their learning outcomes as improved after completing the workshop [7].

For the studies in the field of education, Shiau, Huang, and Wang developed a workshop program for problem-solving skills to improve the teaching quality of “Nursing Theories in General and Specialty” course [8]. They identified the contextual factors such as mission, law, student and faculty characteristics, and resources could influence the course design with the components of objectives, contents, strategies, and evaluation. Except for the classroom teaching, training workshops for the nursing preceptors were identified in the literature. Wung et al. implemented a one-day Objective Structured Teaching Exercise (OSTE) workshop with 60-minute “one-minute preceptor” (OMP) lecture for 15 novice nursing preceptors [9]. The results showed the preceptors’ teaching skills evaluated by Direct Observation of Procedural Skills (DOPS) were improved significantly after the workshop, indicating the workshop enhancing their teaching competency. Similarly, Kang et al. developed a training workshop with 4 hours-lecture inserting insulin injection video, and after that, evaluation by using DOPS was conducted on 55 clinical preceptors [10]. The learners rated over 4 points (5-point Likert scale) of satisfaction regarding the course design, content, and teaching, but below 4 points on the self-evaluation of communication and interaction as well as the quality, appropriate, and discrepancies in the DOPS standard of evaluation.

Method

This is a descriptive and cross sectional survey study, and a questionnaire which contained 21 items was used to determine the impact of the workshop on faculty and student satisfaction. The one-day workshop was designed based on the previous capstone project course and the philosophy of learning by doing. Following was to introduce the process of developing the capstone project course. Initially the author developed an innovative research team for developing a teaching framework of creative thinking in nursing education on the creative process of clinical nurses in Taiwan [11]. Lately the author constructed and evaluated a nursing practicum project production course for the purpose of cultivating the creativity in RN-BSN students as well as producing the innovative nursing products [12]. Additionally, the questionnaire of factors influencing creative process for RN-BSN students was developed and validated as well as the framework of factors influencing creative process for RN-BSN students was validated [13,14]. Furthermore, the effectiveness of a nursing practicum project production course was validated in enhancing the creativity of RN-BSN students [14] Finally, there are patents developed in our innovative research team and published in the scientific articles [15,16].

The study samples were the faculties and students who have been selected to participate into the grant entitled as “Conducting and Evaluating of the Teaching for Creativity Curriculum Module: Industry-Oriented Capstone Course in Healthcare Professionals (II)” (MOST106-2511-S-255–005) (Liu 2017 to 2018) and known their participating into the research process. The purposive participants included 7 faculties from various fields and 7 nursing students who were interacted with each other during the process of the workshop. At the end of the workshop, each participant self-rated their levels of satisfaction from 5 very agree to 1 very disagree of Likert scale in terms of overall performance of the speaker (7 items), course content (4 items), class and quality of care (2 items), self-evaluation (8 items), and comments or suggestions. Following described the teaching objectives and contents of the workshop. The contents of the workshop consist of creative teaching strategies and activities aims at inspiring the learners’ motivation and creative thinking. It provided the opportunities for the learners to produce the innovative products in groups. Furthermore, the learners could apply the critical thinking to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the existing products and patents comparing with their own works. Finally, the learners know how to prepare their innovative products for the domestic/foreign competition as well as to transform into the professional outcomes (Table 1).

Table 1: Timetable and contents of workshop

Nursing practicum product project workshop

Teaching Objectives: After completing the workshop, the learners could

• understand the course design and content of Nursing Practicum Product Project

• feel inspired or motivated toward creativity

• find out clinical plights and apply the concepts of fluency, flexibility, and uniqueness into the brainstorm of creative ideas

• realize the process of product making, including drawing product design sketching and demonstrating the steps of product making in photos with rationales

• analyze the feasibility (including product testing), marketing, and patent application of products

• know how to prepare the innovative products for the domestic and foreign competition as well as to transform them to academic outcomes

Results

Fourteen participants (7 faculties and 7 nursing students) divided into three groups completed the 6-hour learning activities of the workshop. Table 2 showed the results of satisfaction of the workshop. The mean score was high as all over 4.0 in terms of overall performance to the speaker (7 items), course content (4 items), class environment and quality of service (2 items), and self-evaluation (8 items). In other words, the participants were satisfied with the learning experiences from this workshop. One learner replied, “it is a great workshop for teachers and students to promote their knowledge and abilities of Nursing Practicum Product Project”. However, when comparing the scores for each item, item 4-5 analyzing the marketing products and possibility of application, 4-6 knowing the process of applying patents, and 4-8 recognizing the process of transforming the products into research outcomes were scored the lowest (4.33), which means these items may be more difficult and the learners had lower self-confidence in these competencies. Therefore, the workshop design should refine to strength these topics or to consider another learning activities.

Table 2: Faculty and student satisfaction level of workshop (N=14)

Discussion and Conclusion

This study evaluated a one-day workshop with lecture and practice about the course of Nursing Practicum Product Project. The workshop satisfaction survey showed that all participants rated over 4.0 point in terms of overall performance of the speaker, course content, class environment and quality of service, and self-evaluation. The findings were similar to the literature on the areas of EBN, clinical areas, and education. The similarly parts included the type of training, workshop could improve the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of the learners. Instead of knowledge, attitudes, and skills, the EBN and clinical studies [2,3] also mentioned the operational skills such as hand hygiene, TKR, skin care, wound care, nasal tube care, foley care [5,7]. Additionally, nursing preceptors enhanced their clinical teaching skills after attending the training workshops [9,10]. Our workshop focused on course as a vehicle to ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for creativity. This workshop will help learners to grow as they “learn by doing” real work.

The special findings in our study is that faculties and nursing students evaluated the teaching content and methods as high as over 4.5, but self-evaluating their own learning abilities as below 4.5 in terms of realizing the process of production, analyzing the marketing and patent products and possibility of application, and know how to package the innovative products into the domestic/foreign competition as well as to transform into the research outcomes. It is similar to Kang et al. using DOPS to evaluate 55 nursing preceptors and identified over 4 points of satisfaction regarding the workshop course design, content, and teaching, but below 4 points of satisfaction on the self-evaluation on the communication and interaction [10]. The lower self-evaluation scores for the workshop from the learners could be the short-time of periods teaching and most of the learners did not have enough time and confidence to convince themselves being able to achieve the objectives of workshop. One-day workshop may be sufficient for acquisition of knowledge and skills, but not enough for making them internalization. The limitations of our study are small sample size and shortterm educational intervention.

In conclusion, the training workshop is an effective educational intervention for clinical nurses, preceptors, and nursing educators which can improve their knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors. However, the training workshop is better for those who have had either the clinical, school or teaching experiences. For the nursing students, they may feel difficult to practice higher levels of cognitive thinking exercises because of limited clinical or working experiences. This workshop should be offered to nursing faculties for better preparation for teaching creativity. Further research could enlarge the sample size and compare the learning process and outcomes among various nursing faculties and students. Finally, the author proposed that the new era of nursing research based on the literature review was the team style with innovative strategies guiding by the leadership and provided the series of innovative studies from their research team, providing as the reference for other innovative and scientific nursing researchers to further study [17-19].

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