THE DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF A SELF-INSTRUCTION LEARNING MODULE, USING FOOD EXCHANGE LISTS, FOR ASSOCIATE OF SCIENCE DEGREE NURSING STUDENTS (TEACHING, NUTRITION, AUDIOVISUAL).
Contributors: Peabody College For Teachers Of Vanderbilt University.
Published: 1985
Number of pages: 161
Subjects: Education, Technology.
Description: Major changes in teaching nutrition and diet therapy in 2-year nursing programs prompted this investigative study. Shortened curricula make it impossible to follow instructional patterns of the 3-year hospital schools and the 4-year college programs. The newer 2-year curricula make it difficult to teach needed skills in patient care if the lecture method of teaching provides the only option. The change in these curricula produces conflicting opinions on how best to present the broad spectrum of subject matter. Because nurse educators must integrate nutrition and diet therapy into regular nursing classes, this study attempted to develop and evaluate an independent learning module that a nursing instructor can use as an adjunct teaching aid for teaching the exchange system for meal planning in a medical-surgical nursing course.

To determine the effects of the self-instruction module, the study employed a nonequivalent control group design with random assignment of intact groups. The sample for this study consisted of 78 associate degree nursing students. Equivalency information on cognitive ability as measured by American College Testing (ACT) composite scores and grade point averages (GPAs), age, prior nutrition knowledge, and hospital work experience provided evidence of group comparability of these variables. A teacher-made multiple-choice posttest measured learner achievement, while a Likert-type scale assessed attitudes toward the treatment variable.

Submitting the scores to an analysis of co-variance at the .05 significance level revealed that the experimental group performed better on the post-cognitive examination than those taught the exchange system for meal planning in a regular medical-surgical nursing class. While a positive correlation was observed between pre- and posttest scores (.53) for the experimental group, findings revealed that only 28% of the variance in posttest scores was predictable on the basis of knowledge from pretest results. The results show no correlation between ACT scores, GPAs, age, and hospital work experience at the .05 significance level. Chi-square results from the Likert-type attitude scale indicated that students completed the treatment variable with positive attitudes.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-06, Section: A, page: 1603.

Thesis (PH.D.)--PEABODY COLLEGE FOR TEACHERS OF VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, 1985.

School code: 0074.