Capturing their interest: Maximising the potential for student engagement

This paper explores the implementation of a contemporary teaching pedagogy and the subsequent level of student engagement. Tertiary education of nurses is shifting from traditional pedagogical frameworks which are didactic in nature, to a paradigm which focuses on the student and not the academic. This shift in learning focus is as difficult for the student as it is for the academic, and challenges students to engage and faculty to withdraw. An opportunity to evaluate a core nursing strand course, for the purposes of program accreditation, within the second year of an undergraduate nursing degree at an Australian university, was a timely moment to obtain feedback from the students about the course and to assess the level of engagement. Anecdotal evidence from students suggesting poor levels of engagement and initial dissatisfaction with course content was confirmed from survey findings. The study suggests that as teaching frameworks change, universities need to focus on the student, with suitable orientation to support innovative teaching frameworks, rather than the process of course content and delivery, to influence favourable outcomes from learning environments that facilitate a higher level of student engagement.