Kim Mitchell RN MN Red River College Winnipeg, MB Building Self-Efficacy in Scholarly Writing in First Year Nursing Students Kim Mitchell RN MN Red River College Winnipeg, MB

History Not for credit workshops (2005) WRNCASN Edmonton (2006) Mastery Expectations (2007-8) 17/22 New BN Program (2010) Research Study (2011) Online Learning (2012)

confessional

The CHALLENGE How do you teach academic writing in a lecture theatre setting?

Audience 100% of the students take course as mandatory credit. Students who have university degrees and university experience. Students who have written papers before and had good experiences. Students who have written papers before and had bad experiences. Students who have never written a paper. Students who have written a paper before but experience is remote. Students who love writing but write well. Students who love writing but write poorly. Students who hate writing but write well. Students who hate writing and write poorly.

The Study One group Pre-test post test General Self Efficacy Questionnaire (GSES) Writing Self Efficacy Questionnaire (WSE) Anxiety Visual Analog Scale (Anx) Time 1: how anxious are you about this paper Time 2: how anxious are you about the next paper One Qualitative Question: Tell me a story of a previous experience you’ve had writing in an academic environment. Was it a positive or negative experience? When you think back on that experience, how does it make you feel when you anticipate the scholarly paper assignment expected in this course? If you have no previous writing experience, also explain how you feel when anticipating the writing expectations of this course?

Correlational Matrix GSES1 Anx1 WSE1 GSES2 Anx2 WSE2 1 (-) 0.242* 0.504** (-)0.535** 0.589** (-)0.327* 0.404** (-)0.176 0.493** (-)0.542** 0.341* (-)0.551** 0.648** 0.531** (-)0.644** * p < .01 **P < .001 Criterion related validity on WSE at Time 1 and Time 2 N = 64

T-Test Pre-Post Test Pretest X SD Posttest X t p GSES 31.19 3.431 31.5 3.3 (-).818 0.416 Anx 55.19 25.4 45.53 27.4 2.905 0.005 WSE 29.72 4.682 30.67 4.462 (-)1.986 0.051

TeacHer Influences If given guidelines, I can write a decent paper but not without stress. Most academics in my life were easy – paper writing was not. By the time I was done with my paper, not only did I learn a lot about the subject, but I had confidence in my ability to write a good paper and my teacher’s comment was that my paper would put many university students to shame.

Anxiety Writing is something that to be honest terrifies me. I feel like I never sound “smart” enough or that my points are strong enough. I think this is because of my poor foundation in basic English, grammar, sentence structure and spelling. Which is odd because I love to read and most people think there is a direct correlation. So the concept of writing this paper is stressful. Although the topics seem interesting. It still scares me. The idea of fitting all my thoughts on to 3 pages is horrible. I have a tendency to be very long winded. I did pretty well on my university papers, but it was also U-1 so not much was expected. Also I have a tendency to want things to be perfect. So this paper being worth 60% is just the worst. I mean what happens if I crash & burn?

Rules Rules and More Rules I am always nervous about writing because I feel there are so many rules that I can never remember. The paper I wrote took a lot of my time and energy to get it right but in the end I received a great mark.

Perceived Effort Vs. Grade I have handed in what I believe have strong arguments and research and failed the assignments. On others I have put the same effort and received A+. I usually spend too much time on papers in comparison to fellow students without reaping the benefits.

Being Good Doesn’t mean Being Fast I hate writing papers but I’m good at it. It is very time consuming (1 page usually takes me 1.5 to 2 hours). When I find my muse, I’m set but I still dread writing papers!

On the Contrary: An overabundance of Confidence My mother is an English instructor at the University of Manitoba, while I was growing up if I miss behaved I would have to write her papers explaining why I disobeyed her (in APA style). Therefore, I feel comfortable with this class.

Stories of Accolades My teacher let me know I won the contest because my paper/poem was very innovative and creative. This was a very positive experience for me because it allowed me to be myself and trust my inner writer. I believe that experience has given me the courage to be more confident writer for this scholarly assignment we have coming up.

Conclusion They are more excited about writing that I would have guessed. They enjoy researching topics, often more than the writing. Learning to write academically involves drawing upon many personal inner dichotomies. E.g liking the learning and the research, but hating the writing. Liking to write but it still being a painful experience. There is evidence that the structure of the course, if it does not entirely build self- efficacy, does reduce their anxiety in anticipation of future papers. Questions?