Peer Coaching to Support Writing Development

Learning to write well is a difficult but worthwhile effort, as nurses often need to communicate effectively through writing. A range of interventions has been used to promote effective writing by nursing students, but little outcome evidence, beyond student and faculty satisfaction, has been reported. A peer coaching assignment in a senior-level RN-to-BSN nursing complex care theory course required students to complete a scaffolded review of a peer's draft paper and provide constructive feedback to the peer. A masked and a nonmasked faculty rater (with interrater reliability of >0.99) scored the drafts and final papers. The mean scores of the participants' papers improved dramatically (M-change = 14.24, SDchange = 15.26, t [28] = 5.03, p = 0.000, 95% CIdiff [8.44, 20.05]), after peer feedback. Students' responses to the intervention included identification of learning outcomes and the benefits and challenges of providing and receiving peer feedback.