Promoting creativity of nursing students in different teaching and learning settings: A quasi-experimental study

Background: Interdisciplinary teaching provides students with multiple perspectives through instruction from faculty and students in other academic areas. Providing interdisciplinary teaching to students in nursing and interdisciplinary programs could help foster collaborations between students in nursing and students in fields such as design or engineering, which could expand students' understanding of the skills required to develop a working prototype. Objective: To evaluate whether there is an effect of interdisciplinary teaching on nursing students' creative thinking abilities. Design: A quasi-experimental study of two experimental and one control group with a pre-test/post-test design. Setting: The study was conducted between September 2018 and January 2020 in classrooms of a university of science and technology in Taiwan. Participants: Nursing students (N = 191) enrolled in capstone courses participated in this study. Two groups of students were assigned to the intervention: Group 1, comprised of typical students (n = 80) or Group 2, comprised of students with teaching assistantships (n = 30). The control group (n = 81) was typical students. The intervention groups received instruction from interdisciplinary faculty in nursing and design and creativity training. The control group was taught by nursing faculty only, without creativity training. Methods: The Taiwanese version of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (TTCT-F) instrument assessed students' creative thinking abilities at the beginning (pre-test) and end of the 18-week course (post-test). Differences in pre-test/post-test scores between groups were examined with analysis of covariance. Results: Comparisons between mean total and subscale scores for TTCT-F for the two intervention groups and controls demonstrated only Group 2 students (teaching assistants) had significantly higher scores than the control group. Teaching assistants also had significantly higher scores than Group 1. Conclusion: Findings suggest interdisciplinary teaching benefited creative thinking abilities of nursing students holding teaching assistantships. Therefore, it may be more important to first emphasize improvements in academic performance for typical nursing students in Taiwan and then incorporate interdisciplinary teaching into nursing programs to improve creative thinking.