Escape Into a Nursing Career: An Active Recruitment Strategy for Prospective Students.

A purpose of this activity was to determine if an escape room activity could familiarize prospective students with information about a program, nurture an interest in a nursing career, and expose individuals to active teaching strategies. Ten prospective nursing students participated in an escape room recruitment activity that introduced them to aspects of nursing care. The activity decreased participants' nervousness about beginning the nursing program.

Writing Across the Curriculum: Reliability Testing of a Standardized Rubric.

Background: Rubrics positively affect student academic performance; however, accuracy and consistency of the rubric and its use is imperative. The researchers in this study developed a standardized rubric for use across an undergraduate nursing curriculum, then evaluated the interrater reliability and general usability of the tool.

Method: Faculty raters graded papers using the standardized rubric, submitted their independent scoring for interrater reliability analyses, then participated in a focus group discussion regarding rubric use experience.

Implementing Collaborative Learning in Prelicensure Nursing Curricula: Student Perceptions and Learning Outcomes.

This study evaluated learning outcomes and student perceptions of collaborative learning in an undergraduate nursing program. Participants in this 3-phase action research study included students enrolled in a traditional and an accelerated nursing program. The number of students who passed the unit examination was not significantly different between the 3 phases.

Evaluation of embedded audio feedback on writing assignments.

The purpose of this pilot study was to compare embedded audio feedback (EAF), which faculty provided using the iPad(®) application iAnnotate(®) PDF to insert audio comments and written feedback (WF), inserted electronically on student papers in a series of writing assignments. Goals included determining whether EAF provides more useful guidance to students than WF and whether EAF promotes connectedness among students and faculty. An additional goal was to ascertain the efficiency and acceptance of EAF as a grading tool by nursing faculty.