A course design format to facilitate teaching research online to RN - BSN students

Using research evidence to inform nursing practice and collaborate with other health care professionals is considered an essential professional competency in undergraduate nursing education. Yet teaching nursing research is often challenging because of the non-clinical nature of the content. Furthermore, non-traditional nursing students, such as those in RN – BSN programs, have unique needs such that course activities must be especially engaging, relevant to clinical practice, and flexible. The purpose of this paper is to present a course design format that facilitated teaching nursing research to RN – BSN students. Consideration of students' transitional experiences in RN – BSN programs as well as an integrative taxonomy of significant learning experiences are reported in the paper.