Effects of Didactic Instruction and Test-Enhanced Learning in a Nursing Review Course.

BACKGROUND: Determining the most effective approach for students' successful academic performance and achievement on the national licensure examination for RNs is important to nursing education and practice. METHOD: A quasi-experimental design was used to compare didactic instruction and test-enhanced learning among nursing students divided into two fundamental nursing review courses in their final semester. Students in each course were subdivided into low-, intermediate-, and high-score groups based on their first examination scores. Mixed model of repeated measure and two-way analysis of variance were applied to evaluate students' academic results and both teaching approaches. RESULTS: Intermediate-scoring students' performances improved more through didactic instruction, whereas low-scoring students' performances improved more through test-enhanced learning. CONCLUSION: Each method had differing effects on individual subgroups within the different performance level groups of their classes, which points to the importance of considering both the didactic and test-enhanced learning approaches. [J Nurs Educ. 2017;56(11):683-687.].