title: Pretest online discussion groups to augment teaching and learning.
abstract: Tests and final examination scores of three semesters of control students in a nursing foundation course were compared with tests and final examination scores of three semesters of participating students. Participating students were offered access to an asynchronous pretest online discussion activity with a faculty e-moderator. While the simplified Bloom's revised taxonomy assisted in creating appropriate preparatory test and final examination questions for pretest online discussion, Salmon's five-stage online method provided direction to the e-moderator on how to encourage students to achieve Bloom's higher-order thinking skills during the pretest online discussions. Statistical analysis showed the pretest online discussion activity had a generally positive impact on tests and final examination scores, when controlling for a number of possible confounding variables, including instructor, cumulative grade point average, age, and credit hours.
authors.affiliation: Mathematics, Statistics and Physics Department, Purdue University North Central, Westville, IN, USA. jkuhn@pnc.edu
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kuhn
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hasbargen
authors.forename: Halina
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Miziniak
mesh_terms: D004507:Education, Nursing, Associate / Q000379:methods*; D004521:Educational Measurement; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D015146:Midwestern United States; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*