The Use of Toolkits to Increase Student Engagement in a Virtual Course

Encouraging student-to-student engagement during virtual courses is challenging, yet important for students to learn skills they will need as nurses.

Toolkit activities were developed as an innovative active learning strategy. Students were provided a toolkit: a bag full of clinical items, images of items, clinical documents, or sample data that corresponded to six different toolkit activities. Students completed the toolkit activities in groups of eight; each member of the group had different items, which required students to engage with other group members to complete the activity.

Students completed anonymous surveys at midterm and at the end of semester. Most of the students indicated toolkit assignments promoted engagement of group members (91.6% at midterm and 92.4% at the end of the semester).

The toolkit activities encouraged student-to-student engagement and provided students with hands-on learning they could apply to the clinical setting. [.