Influence of collaborative learning on clinical reasoning skills of pre-licensure nursing students

The purpose of the study was to determine if collaborative activities were effective in improving clinical reasoning skills. The overall research question for this study was: Does participation in collaborative learning activities increase the clinical reasoning skills of undergraduate nursing students from beginning through completion of an 8 week clinical experience. A convenience sample of 17 second-year nursing students from one community college who were enrolled in their second medical/surgical clinical rotation participated in the intervention. Preliminary analyses were used to compare the three groups of nursing students included in the study. The three groups of nursing students were assigned to three medical/surgical clinical rotations. The groups' overall scores and scores on the five domains for the OPT were compared using Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance. The results of these analyses were not statistically significant, providing support that the students in the three groups did not differ in clinical reasoning skills prior to completing the first case study. A t-test for dependent samples was used to determine if nursing students' clinical reasoning skills changed significantly from the first week to the final week of the study. The results provided evidence that students' overall scores increased significantly, although no statistically significant changes were found for the five domain scores. The posttest scores for the five domains were higher than the pretest scores, but the differences were not sufficient to be considered significant. Based on the findings for this research question, the null hypothesis is rejected. The total scores increased, but the five domain scores were not statistically significant.