Development of strategies to identify the learning needs of baccalaureate nursing students

Meeting the learning needs of nursing students today requires a shift in paradigms and the use of multimethods of teaching. This article describes case-control research undertaken to measure the effects of learning strategies on the final grades of first semester junior level, baccalaureate nursing students. The strategies used and how the students learned to use the strategies are presented. Research results did not provide statistical significance because of the small sample size. However, several trends related to ethnicity, student age, and the content of nursing courses were found. These findings suggest the need for further nursing education research in the areas of information processing and the use of learning strategies within academic and clinical settings.