Blended Learning to Increase Student Satisfaction: An Exploratory Study

Undergraduate nursing research courses are often difficult to teach due to the challenging content and lack of student satisfaction. To address this issue, two nursing instructors and a librarian embedded online discussions into an accelerated format, introductory nursing research course. The study was conducted over two semesters with two different instructors. The researchers investigated if using the blended learning strategy of discussion boards enhanced the learning experience and tested their theory with two measures: a weekly qualitative questionnaire and a post-study survey. Results suggested that asynchronous online discussions increased student satisfaction in introductory nursing research course work.