Abstract

The United States is facing a current and worsening nursing workforce shortage which poses a threat to today's healthcare structure. Strategies to combat this shortage by increasing the number of qualified applicants admitted to nursing programs each year have been implemented. In addition to increasing the number of students admitted each year, work must be done to better support those nursing students to make it to graduation. A method that can help is through achieving student engagement which has been linked to improved critical thinking, learning, and grades. One teaching strategy that has the potential to increase student engagement is gamification, which is the use of game elements in non-game contexts. In this exploratory-descriptive qualitative study, six nursing faculty who used gamification to teach prelicensure nursing students were interviewed regarding their perception of student engagement using gamification as well as the influences and outcomes of gamification use. Data received from these interviews were analyzed for common themes. Through the analysis, eight themes emerged: (a) gamification impacts student engagement; (b) students express engagement using verbal and nonverbal means; (c) the university impacts faculty's ability to successfully implement gamification; (d) internal and external factors influence faculty's decision to use gamification; (e) faculty consider student outcomes when choosing, designing, and implementing gamification; (f) certain game elements are more effective in activating student engagement; (g) student characteristics impact student engagement when using gamification; and (h) achieving student engagement using gamification creates positive student outcomes.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 30423110; ProQuest document ID: 2806786415. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Elizabeth A. Lucas, EdD, RN, CNE

Sigma Membership

Phi Gamma (Virtual)

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Descriptive/Correlational

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Faculty Attitudes, Teaching Methods, Student Engagement, Nursing Education

Advisor

Lina Bostwick

Second Advisor

Angela McCown

Third Advisor

Judith Stanley

Degree

Doctoral-Other

Degree Grantor

Bryan College of Health Sciences

Degree Year

2023

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2024-08-14

Full Text of Presentation

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