Cara Gallegos, assistant professor for the School of Nursing; Pamela Gehrke, associate professor; and Hannah Nakashima, undergraduate nursing student, are celebrating the publication of their manuscript, “Can Mobile Devices be Used as an Active Learning Strategy? Student Perceptions of Mobile Device Use in a Nursing Course” to the peer reviewed journal Nurse Educator.
The manuscript explored student learning using mobile devices and applications as it can be challenging to engage prelicensure nursing students in theoretical non clinical courses. The purpose was to further describe students’ experiences with various teaching strategies and describe their perceptions of engagement and learning using a mobile device and application. The study was conducted in a mixed-methods design, which included an online survey and oral interviews with students in an undergraduate nursing research and evidence-based practice course taught by Gallegos at Boise State.
As a result, students reported high levels of perceived learning and moderate levels of perceived engagement. This provided the conclusion that students benefited from thoughtful, intentional mobile device use that engaged them with course ideas, limited off-task distractions, and improved collaborative experiences with peers and the instructor.