APPROACHING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN PRACTICAL SEMINARS WITH DEGREE STUDENTS: FAMILY PLANNING IN MATERNITY NURSING

Introduction/Background:
The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) establishes a system of degrees with Degree studies at its first level, whose syllabi consist of a high practical teaching load in studies of the Health Sciences branch.

At our University, the Maternity Nursing subject is compulsory and is taught in year 2 of Nursing degree studies. It aims to qualify students to pay comprehensive attention to women throughout their life cycle, and in the different stages and situations of their sexual and reproductive life (pregnancy, birth, puerperium, climaterium), to accomplish an optimum health status through prevention or recovering ill women’s health. Part of this learning is given in practical seminars. Collaborative learning involves students during their own learning process, and improving their memory of the subject, their attitude towards learning, and their interpersonal relationships (intra- and intergroup). Students tend to find this interesting because it goes beyond the theoretical concepts taught in master classes, and encourages learning through peers.
Thus we consider it interesting to approach and implement collaborative learning into practical seminars, and to know our students’ degree of satisfaction with this practical learning and their possible improvement proposals after participating in it.

Objective:
To implement and bring closer collaborative learning to our Nursing Degree students for the practical seminars in the Maternity Nursing subject, and to know their degree of satisfaction and series of proposals to improve it.

Method:
A quanti-qualitative study about 108 year-2 Nursing Degree students registered for the Maternity Nursing subject. It included a practical seminar about the different existing family planning methods and techniques.
Following the collaborative learning methodology, the students were divided into four practical groups, which were subdivided into subgroups to work on the different family planning methods and techniques, who shared their information with the other subgroups. The teacher acted as a guide for this activity and provided complementary material. After this practical seminar, students’ degree of satisfaction was assessed and they indicated some improvement proposals.

Results:
In our study, 75.7% of the students were female and 24.3% were male. The mean score that the practical seminar participants gave was 8.3 points (SD±0.8). Their degree of satisfaction after attending the seminar was high. One outstanding improvement proposal was to include more material resources to allow students to practice more family planning means/techniques. What the students found most interesting was the learning method employed which favoured their interaction, and the new knowledge they acquired as they can apply it as future nurses.

Conclusions:
Student satisfaction with the collaborative learning-based practical seminar was high, not only for the knowledge they acquired while they participated in it, but also for its dynamics and the method followed. The improvement proposals made by students allow curricular planning to improve and such activities to be performed.