Nursing students` experience of writing a bachelor thesis – a qualitative study

Abstract

The bachelor thesis (BT) in nursing education is a significant piece of academic work for students. It serves as an instrument for demonstrating and assessing the knowledge they have gained throughout their education. The BT also introduces the students to the field of research. Students often write it on their own, and it has been characterized as the ultimate self-regulating learning task for undergraduate students. This study aims to explore undergraduate nursing students’ experiences of being in the process of writing their BT. It is valuable to gain information on students’ experiences in the middle of the writing process to improve the pedagogical and practical organization of the BT course in nursing education. Individual interviews were conducted with 14 students who were in the process of writing their BT. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the interviews. The theory of self-regulated learning was used to explore and contextualize the findings. The main findings are that the nursing students operated in both an individual and a social context while writing on their BT. Further, the study describes how students utilized and developed previous knowledge and organized the writing process. It also discusses how their personal abilities and motivation affected their learning process. The findings also show that students viewed discussions and feedback on their BT as being positive, and they provide information on how students experienced obstacles and unmet expectations. This study found that the most important self-regulated learning strategies used by the students while writing the BT were help-seeking, goal setting, time planning, and study techniques.