A Mixed Study on the Factors for Enhancing Communication Competency of Nursing Students Participating in Multicultural Basic Subject Class

Abstract

This study explores the factors that improve the communication competence of nursing students who participated in a basic subject class related to multicultural education, focusing on a particular medium. For this purpose, the students enrolled in a basic subject class of multicultural education at A University were selected as the research subjects. The research participants were 47 nursing students who participated in this class, and it was conducted as a mixed study. This class is conducted in a ‘flipped’ learning manner, and was established to cultivate communication competencies from the perspective of inter-cultural communication based on question generation and conversation. The results of the survey showed that interpretation competence, role performance competence, and self-presentation competence improved significantly on a statistical basis after the class. Although goal setting competence and message conversion competence were not significant among the students, their scores increased after they took the class. The researcher collected data through participatory observation, from the learners' task performance results, and through FGI analysis (what does this stand for?). The results of analyzing the data are as follows. First, the activity of generating questions in small groups was linked to new meaning-creating communication competencies. Second, communication is not simply a matter of information exchange efficiency, but is promoted more in the relationship of teamwork and cooperation. Third, communication competency for the students improved during the process of them reaching an agreement through conversation in a practical sense. Finally, a practical teaching method was proposed to improve their communication competency and to expand and apply these methods to their real lives.