Integrating advanced writing content into a scholarly inquiry in nursing course

Since there are few data examining methods to help students learn to write in a scholarly manner, the purposes of this project were to (1) evaluate students' learning of writing content integrated into a Scholarly Inquiry in Nursing course by examining differences in scores on a writing assessment taken at the beginning and end of the course; and (2) examine student confidence ratings relative to writing to see if it improved during the course. After obtaining IRB approval and informed consent, the CLIPS pre and post assessment mean scores of 82 students in a Scholarly Inquiry in Nursing course were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Confidence ratings in formal and informal writing were also obtained from a subsample of 47 students. Mean scores improved in 12 out of 26 assessment categories related to punctuation, correct usage of words, and sentence construction. Student mean confidence ratings increased each month.