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AIM: This study aims to assess the effectiveness of a short online training intervention to improve oral BT defense in nursing students. BACKGROUND: To obtain their undergraduate degree, nursing students must complete a bachelor's thesis and defend it in front of a panel of examiners. Both written work and oral defense competencies are evaluated for the final grade. The literature describes several interventions for improving written bachelor's thesis competencies but none for oral presentation and defense skills. DESIGN: This real-world cohort study took place over three academic years, from 2020 to 2023, in a Spanish nursing school. METHODS: The effects of a training workshop on the evaluation process were analyzed by comparing mean grades from bachelor's thesis evaluation rubrics. RESULTS: A total of 816 rubrics were included. The mean grade for the bachelor's thesis oral defense was 8.39 (standard deviation SD 1.52) out of 10. The students who did not attend any workshop sessions obtained the lowest grade (8.02 SD 1.62), whereas those who attended the whole workshop scored highest (8.76 SD 1.35). In multivariable analysis, the students who attended the full workshop scored 0.70 points higher, while being a woman increased the final mean score by 0.29 points. CONCLUSIONS: An online workshop was effective in improving nursing students' skills in the oral presentation and defense of their bachelor's thesis, with final grades increasing in correlation to their level of attendance. By improving academic performance and fostering communication competencies, such interventions can be integrated into nursing curricula to support student success, reduce presentation anxiety and better prepare graduates for professional roles that require effective verbal communication.
Chust‐Hernández et al. (Sat,) studied this question.