Interdisciplinary research: evaluating writing to learn in the nursing curriculum.

A 3-year collaborative study was conducted by the department head of baccalaureate nursing and the director of writing at a southern university in Louisiana. The research was designed to test the effectiveness of an intense writing-to-learn curriculum intervention incorporated into a required introductory nursing course. Writing-to-learn strategies used in this study were designed to foster personal involvement in the subject matter, improve data comprehension, and encourage critical thinking (Dobie & Poirrier, 1995). The findings reported in this study represent Part III of a 3-year investigation into the effectiveness of using writing-to-learn strategies in freshman nursing classes.