Research Proposal: Activity-Based Learning for Nursing Students

This research proposal investigates the impact of activity-based learning (ABL) on second language acquisition among nursing students in an Australian college. The study addresses the challenges faced by culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students, focusing on how ABL can improve their English language skills and clinical performance. Grounded in Leininger’s Cultural Care Theory and Humanistic Nursing Theory, the research employs a mixed-methods approach, including quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews. The methodology involves purposive sampling of nursing educators and international nursing students, with data analysis using SPSS. The literature review highlights a gap in understanding the effectiveness of ABL for this specific context. The research aims to contribute to the nursing education curriculum by providing insights into the benefits of ABL for CALD students, promoting equal educational opportunities, and potentially enhancing their clinical success.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research Proposal
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Topic
Activity based learning increases acquisition of the second language
Introduction
Background to the problem
Learning under a specific clinical environment for the nursing students has a
significant role in the higher education. The main challenge for the culturally and
linguistically diverse (CALD) students in the clinical placements is difference in language
and culture. For CALD students, English is the second language and lack of proper exposure
of to English creates clinical failures while decreasing the overall attrition (Mikkonen et al.,
2016). The gap in proper understanding and acquisition of the English as the second language
leads to significant barrier in the clinical education. Moreover effective learning strategies
must be implemented by the nursing educators in order to increase the acquisition of the
English which is the second language for the international students (Graham et al., 2016).
Statement of research question
To investigate whether activity based learning increases acquisition of second language
among nursing students in Australian college or not
Relevance of the proposal
Graham et al. (2016) stated that bringing modification in the learning strategies will
help to promote equal opportunity for education among the CALD nursing students studying
in Australia. This conduction of the research will help to analyse the importance of the
activity-based learning (ABL) in acquisition of the second language among the Australian
college students. Verifying the effectiveness of the ABL will help to bring change in the

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nursing education curriculum and thereby helping to create equal opportunity for the CALD
nursing students.
Conceptual framework
The two theories over which the conceptual framework of the study is based is the
Leininger’s Cultural Care Theory and Humanistic Nursing Theory. The first theory promotes
the importance of the cultural accommodation and cultural preservation not only in practice
but also in nursing education. Proper culturally competent educational model helps to
promote effective learning (De Chesnay & Anderson, 2019). One the other hand, humanistic
theory give importance on blending of the emotional and personal perspective in the
educational framework for the nursing students and also while procuring the care plan
(Khademi, Mohammadi & Vanaki, 2017).
Literature Review
In order to conduct the review of the literature, to identify the research gap, previously
published research articles were searched online in the electronic databases. The main
databases that were used for the search of the articles include Cochrane, CINHAL, Pubmed
and Psych Info. These are the main databases which have highest number of the papers
availability based on the nursing studies (Fain, 2017). The databases were search with the use
of the keywords in order to find relevant articles that fall within the scope of this research and
published within the last five years. The main keywords used for the search of the articles
include “activity based learning”, nursing student” “second language”. Parahoo (2014) stated
that use of the keywords and setting out filters for the search of the articles help to narrow
down the search results. The literature research however, highlighted few papers and is
illustrated below

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Review of articles
Cant and Cooper (2017) conducted a systematic review in order to identify the impact
of the stimulation-based education for the under graduate nursing students. The analysis of
the results highlighted that simulation-based education helps the nursing students in a number
of ways when it is integrated into pre-licensure nursing curricula. However, the review also
highlight gap in the high quality study designs and use of constellation instruments in order to
address the needs of learning of the nursing students. The review is based on 25 articles and
this can be considered as one of the strength of the research. However, Nepomuceno and
Soares (2018) stated the systematic reviews are not primary research and hence can be
regarded as the principal drawback.
Hwang et al. (2016) conducted an observational learning in order to identify role of
the activity based learning (game-based learning) in facilitating listening and speaking skills
of the students. The analysis of the results highlighted that the game-based learning can
significantly help to improve the speaking skills of the students if the game is driven by
mobile. The results also help to identify that activity based learning helps to promote
acquisition of the English as a foreign language and at the same time helps the students to
create meaningful sentences and speak with greater accuracy and confidence. One of the
strength of the study is, the large sample size of the population over which the observational
study was conducted however, the study was not conducted on the nursing students and thus
not directly related to the scope of this research proposal.
Liu and Chen (2015) also make use to mobile assisted learning technology in order to
study its effects on the acquisition of English as a second language learners among the 116
college students in Central Taiwan. The analysis of the results highlighted that the
experimental group exhibited significantly high level of perception towards the phrase-
learning activities by the use of English as a main language in comparison to the control

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groups. The high level of the confidence interval (95%) can be considered as one of the
strength of the study and it helped to highlight the rate of validity and reliability of the study.
However, the study is conducted only over the student of Central Taiwan and this is one of
the study limitations (Malterud, Siersma & Guassora, 2016).
Review summary and research gap
Review of the literature though limited helped to understand that activity based
learning is useful in promoting the acquisition of second language. The review mainly
stressed over the use of the mobile game as the main medium of the activity based learning.
However, the review failed to identify any valid reference towards how activity based
learning is useful in increasing the second language acquisition among the Australian nursing
students and this can be considered as the main research gap over which the research
proposal has been designed.
Methodology
Research methodology is defined as the body of knowledge that enables scholars to
describe and simultaneously analyse the methods (Taylor, Bogdan & DeVault, 2015).
Research design
Research design helps to provide direction for the collection and simultaneous
analysis of the data in the study (Neuman & Robson, 2014). According to Saunders et al.
(2015), the research process can be represented in the form of onion. The different layers of
the onion are considered as the different layers or steps of the research methodology
(Creswell & Poth, 2017).

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Figure: Research Onion
(Source: Saunders et al. 2015)
Research philosophy
Research philosophy is the first layer of the research opinion. It is defined as a process
of development of knowledge in particular field. There are various type of research
philosophies and these include positivism, realism and interpretivisim and pragmatism.
Pragmatism will be suitable for conducting the present research as it will help to explore the
relationship between the ABL and acquisition of secondary language among Australian
nursing students. Hughes and Sharrock (2016) stated that pragmatism seeks to explore the
lived experience and thus will help in exploring the personal experience and opinions of the
Australian students. Mayer (2015) argued that pragmatism offers a suitable framework to
study the relationship between the antecedents and consequences and will help to understand
the effectiveness of ABL in nursing education curriculum.

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Research approach
It is the second layer of the research onion and there are two types of research
approach namely inductive and deductive. The deductive research approach helps to use the
literature in order to identify theories and ideas that the researcher will use for the testing of
the data. Inductive research approach deals with collection of the new information and
development of new theory based on that data (Silverman, 2016). In this research, the
researcher will use deductive research approach.
Research strategy and time horizons
These are the third and fourth layer of the research onion respectively. After selecting
deductive orientation as the main research approach, the question here is to select proper
whether the study will be exploratory, causal or descriptive (Noble & Mitchell, et al., 2016)..
The study will make use of the survey strategy as it is associated with the deductive
approach. On the other hand, an explanatory design will be used. Exploratory research helps
to study a relationship that has not been studied before (Brannen, 2017). Study of the
relationship between the problems or the variables (dependent variable: acquisition of second
language and independent variable: ABL) will help in the establishment of priorities and
thereby helping to frame more operational nursing education framework.
Research method
There are three types of research method: quantitative, qualitative and mixed
methods. Quantitative design helps to describe the factors like sample size and the types of
data along with sampling techniques, recruitment process (Bryman, 2016). The quantitative
method will be used in this research in order to investigate the relationship between the ABL
and acquisition of the second language among the nursing students. It will used further to
examine the influence of the ABL in increasing the overall performance of the nursing

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students. Robinson (2014) stated that quantitative research is suitable when relationship
between the two variables is required to be studied.
Qualitative research is confirmatory research, which is used to collect textual data like
surveys, semi-structured interviews or focus group interviews. It is used to investigate an
issue associated with the experience or work of the interviewees through collecting their
views, perceptions and attitudes (Etikan, Musa & Alkassim, 2016). Thus qualitative research
will be used to obtain a detailed explanation from the interviewees based on their experience
of employing ABL.
A mixed method approach makes use of both qualitative and quantitative research in a
particular study for analysis of the data. It helps in the analysis of the both the responses
generated through open-ended and close-ended questionnaire (Robinson, 2014). The research
will make use of the mixed method approach. It will help the scholars to be more confident
about their results. At first the research will conduct the quantitative aspect of the study
followed by the qualitative interviews.
Target population
The main target populations are the nursing educators and the international nursing
students. The nursing educators will be subjected to the semi-structured interview with open-
ended questionnaire in order to understand their perspective of importance of ABL in
improving second language acquisition. The internal or CLAD nursing students will be
subjected to survey (close-ended questionnaire) in order highlighted their understanding or
opinion.
Sample size and sampling strategy
The sample size will be: 3 nurse educators and 20 international nursing students. The
main sampling technique that will be used for the selection of the both nurse educators and

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nursing students is purposive sampling or non-probability sampling. Non random selection of
the sample will be done as the main pool of participations is less (Palinkas et al., 2015).
Questionnaire development process
The questionnaire was developed by taking reference from the review of literature.
And the survey that will be used for study will be written in English and will be
simultaneously translated into the native language of the CALD students.
Reliability and validity
The reliability ad validity of the study will be determined by conducting a pilot test
over the 2 participants selected randomly from the college. The participants will be from the
nurse educators and their opinion will be used in making modifications and in questionnaire.
Data collection
The collection of the survey will be done manually in written MCQ format and semi-
structured face-to-face interview will be recorded in audio recorder. The recorded transcript
will be decoded in transcript in written format and the survey results will be encrypted in the
digital format in order to conduct the statistical analysis.
Data analysis
The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS.20] will be used for the analysis of
the survey data. Multiple regression analysis will be used to investigate the relationship
between the independent variable and dependent variable. The interview data will be subject
to content analysis (Ranney et al., 2015).

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Ethical Consideration
Confidentiality and security
According to the ethics of the conduction of the interview, the name of the
interviewee must be kept withheld in order to ensure the confidentiality (Ranney et al., 2015).
None of the name of the respondents, both the students and the nursing educators will be
disclosed in the research instead a pseudo name will be given during the analysis of the
interview transcript. In order to ensure further security of the participants, after the generation
of the interview transcript in written format, it will reviewed by the simultaneous respondents
in order to secure autonomy.
Consent form
Before the conduction of the interview process, the willing participants will be asked
to sign a consent form. Informed consent is an important aspect of the conduction of both
qualitative interview and quantitative survey. The informed consent will state the purpose and
scope of the interview. It will also state they (prospective interviewee) is not compelled to
take part in the interview. They can only take part if they are willing to do and they can leave
the interview or the survey process at any point of time without any previous notification and
such sudden withdrawal will not harm their professional career. The place of the conduction
of the interview will be as per their convenience. This will help to ensure the security of the
interview. The survey however will be conducted in the college premises. None of the
question in the interview or survey will contain controversial questions and will maintain
their dignity.

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Storage of the data
The storage of the audio transcript after the generation of the written transcript will be
done in the computer system of the first author of this research proposal and will only be
disclosed to other authors of the study and no one else.
Conclusion
Limitations of the study
The main limitation of the study is its low sample size. Palinkas et al. (2015) are of
the opinion that the low sample size hampers the variability of the research as smaller sample
size leads to decreasingly representative of the original population, hampering the standard
deviation. Low sample size also leads to the uncover age bias that affects the reliability of the
study. Another limitation of the study is, the research approach fails highlight proper
approach to handle the threat of the sample size reduction due to interview drop-outs and
survey drop-outs or drop-out in the middle of the process.
Potential impact of the proposed study
The conduction of the study will help to ascertain the effectiveness of the ABL in
nursing education towards the acquisition of the second language. If the following study
proves that ABL is effective learning approach then subsequent changes in the nursing
curriculum can be done. Change in the nursing curriculum for CALD students will be to
increase the retention of the international nursing students in the Australia. Gwynne and
Lincoln (2017) stated that international nursing students and CALD students will help in
building of the culturally competent workforce and thereby helping to increase the overall
access of the nursing care with a special mention to aboriginal service users.

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Summary
Thus from the above plan, it can be said that the author is going to conducted a
research with mixed method approach with exploratory research design in order to ascertain
effectiveness of activity based learning in acquisition of second language among nursing
students in Australian college.