Students' perspectives of effective and ineffective nursing instructors

This descriptive study identified students' perspectives of the characteristics used to judge the quality of a classroom nursing instructor. A sample of 171 baccalaureate nursing students from a university in the midwestern United States completed the study. The nursing students completed a questionnaire regarding personal demographics, characteristics of an effective and ineffective instructor, and how their grade and the amount of coursework affected their opinion of the instructor. Content analysis was performed to categorize the characteristics that emerged, with data ranked according to the number of times each characteristic was identified as effective or ineffective. Teaching methods, personality, and presentation of course materials were the three primary characteristics of an effective instructor, according to the students' responses, with personality being most important. Conversely, in related nursing studies of effective teachers, personality characteristics were ranked lower.