The impact of active learning on nursing students' clinical success

Active, cooperative learning is a method to teach the critical thinking skills necessary for the transfer and use of classroom-acquired knowledge in the clinical setting. Yet many nursing educators continue to use teacher-centered educational approaches while identifying an array of barriers for the voiced preference for student-centered education. Using holistic, active cooperative learning strategies (faculty role modeling, student interactive and group learning, and group testing) within a didactic class, the authors found differences in the average clinical grade (87.03) when compared to the average clinical grade for students who had been taught using a lecture approach (84.19).