Use of self-regulating learning strategies by students in the second and third trimesters of an accelerated...

Accelerated nursing programs have proliferated in recent years, attracting adult learners with varied backgrounds and experience into the profession of nursing. Learner adaptation to and successful completion of nursing programs delivered in an accelerated format require that students use self-regulatory learning strategies to focus, organize, integrate, and retain knowledge derived from classroom and clinical sources. The purpose of this descriptive, exploratory study was to examine the presence and extent of and differences in self-reported regulatory learning strategy use in a convenience sample of two groups of non-nursing college graduates. Determination of strategy use was delineated by student responses to the learning strategy subscales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Results of this study demonstrate that although both groups of students used self-regulated learning strategies, students who have completed more of the accelerated program use more self-regulatory learning strategies than their less experienced counterparts.