DOI: 10.5176/2315-4330_WNC13.60
Authors: Chien-Lin Kuo, Shu-Yuan Chang and Fan-Rey Kuo
Abstract:
Background: Researchers indicated that the cognitive style may affect students’ performance in using new technologies.
The online learning can provide students a flexible and innovative learning environment and facilitate students’ active learning as well. Purpose: This study attempts to investigate the effects of cognitive styles and learning strategies on students’ problem-solving abilities when online collaborative inquiry-based learning strategy integrated into Community Health Nursing (CHN) course. Methods: Ninety-six fourth-year undergraduate nursing students from a university in southern Taiwan were assigned to an experimental group and a control group randomly. Experimental and control groups received the same teaching contents and materials. The only difference was their teaching strategy; group-cooperative learning or individual learning. Both groups adopted online inquiry-based learning activities for
problem-solving via a web-search learning environment called Meta-Analyzer (MA). Meta-analyzer Search System developed
by Hwang et al. (2008), was used as an information summarizing instruction strategy to improve the students’ problem-solving ability, including keyword usage, information resource selecting and content extracting. Each group completed 7 series of questions regarding to CHN topics. The data were collected before and after the intervention in September 2011 to February 2012. Results: After 12-week teaching intervention, 84 (87.5{6e6090cdd558c53a8bc18225ef4499fead9160abd3419ad4f137e902b483c465}) students fully participated in the study, with 48 in the experimental group and 36 in the control group, respectively. Group Figure-Embedded Test (GFET) developed by Wu (1987) was used to measure the cognitive style of students. For the fieldindependent and middle-type students, group-cooperative learning strategy had better effects on online problem-solving performance (OPSA) than individual learning strategy did. For the field-dependent students, group-cooperative learning strategy had better effects on learning attitude, cognitive load, information problem-solving ability (IPSA) and OPSP than individual learning strategy did. The effectiveness of groupcooperative learning strategy on students’ OPSP was significantly better than that of individual learning strategy. Most students reported that they liked learning through an online system and some suggested that additional discussion of answers was necessary after online learning activities. Implication/Conclusion: The study results showed that the students with different cognitive styles had different learning preference and performance in a web-searching environment. The findings could provide some references for nursing educators to apply the information technology in professional course design
Keywords: cognitive style, online learning, problem-solving ability, nursing students
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