Breathing Life into the Syllabus - The Collaborative Development of a 2016 CELT Vol IX - First-Year Writing Course for Nursing Students

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay

Breathing Life into the Syllabus presents a collaborative account of how English and nursing faculty developed a mandatory first-semester writing course for the collaborative Bachelor of Science, Nursing (BScN) program at Fanshawe College and Western University in London, Ontario. The narrative explains the course’s motivation, beginning with research identifying writing skill gaps among first-year nursing students, and connects the curriculum to scholarship on professional literacy and nursing practice. It further describes the interdisciplinary process used to solve curriculum design problems and outlines directions for future development.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Course development rationale

Why nurses need writing skills and what to teach

Breathing Life into the Syllabus: The Collaborative Development of a 2016 CELT Vol IX [celt. uwindsor.ca](celt. uwindsor.ca) [www.stlhe.ca](www.stlhe.ca) First-Year Writing Course for Nursing Students Mark Feltham and Mary Anne Krahn Fanshawe College In this essay, we tell the story of how a team of English and nursing professors came together to develop curriculum for a mandatory first-semester writing course in the collaborative Bachelor of Science, Nursing (BScN) at Fanshawe College and Western University, both in London, Ontario. The discussion focuses on the implementation of the course at the Fanshawe site. Following a review of literature that has informed our thinking about writing in nursing, we discuss how the team, consisting of both English/writing and nursing faculty, solved curriculum problems to develop an effective course. We also look forward to areas for future development. Introduction This essay tells the story and nursing professors of how a team of English came together to develop curriculum for a mandatory first-semester writing course in the collaborative Bachelor of Science, Nursing (BScN) at Fanshawe College (hereafter Fanshawe) and Western University (hereafter Western) . The need to build this course resulted in ongoing discussions among educators of very different disciplinary backgrounds about topics ranging from the basic mission of the course to the development of discipline-relevant assignments. Our reflections on this process will likely interest educators seeking to develop a similar course; however, these reflections also raise larger questions regarding students’ needs, interdisciplinary and crossinstitutional collaboration, and curriculum development processes. Why do nurses need writing skills and what writing skills should we teach them? The process of developing this course began with a research project, approved by the Research Ethics Boards of both Fanshawe College and Western University and supported by both institutions, designed to assess the writing skills of first-year nursing students. Although a full discussion of this study is beyond the scope of this essay, the findings did support what we already knew both intuitively and anecdotally: first-year nursing students had gapsin their writing skills. In addition, the review of the literature regarding nursing students and writing skills undertaken for this study informed our initial thinking about the course. This literature revealed almost universal recognition of writing as a crucial professional skill. We were assisted in this regard by relatively recent work (Andre & Graves, 2013) surveying writing teaching in nursing programs at Canadian colleges and universities: this article, along with our own parallel database searches, showed decades-old patterns in the literature (in English) regarding nurses and writing. Several common threads quickly emerged. Most importantly, nurses need writing skills because, simply put, nurses write. For example, Troxler, Jacobson Vann, and Oermann’s (2011) statement that "[w]ritten communication skills are critical for nursing practice" (p. 280) reflects general scholarly consensus on this point (Andre & Graves, 2013; Smith & Caplin, 2012; Zygmont & Schaefer, 2006; Zorn, Clark, & Weimholt, 1997) . In surveying this consensus, Andre and Graves (2013) thus concluded that "nursing programs have an obligation to ensure that nursing students are taught how to write well"(p. 91). Writing and related skills, moreover, as Andreand Graves (2013) further noted, fit into the larger context of what Smith and Caplin (2012) term“professional literacy,” a key requirement of nursing practice involving the “ability to seek and apply skills related to scholarship for career advancement” (p. 121) . In other words, professional programs should teach the professional skills required in professional practice. Despite the compelling logic of this line of argument, however, Andre and Grav

FAQs

What problem motivated the creation of the first-semester nursing writing course?

A research project assessing first-year nursing students’ writing skills found gaps in their writing abilities, which informed the course’s development.

Why are writing skills important in nursing practice?

Nurses write as part of professional practice, and scholarly consensus describes written communication as critical for nursing care and professional functioning.

How did the interdisciplinary team approach curriculum design?

English/writing and nursing faculty collaborated to address curriculum challenges, developing discipline-relevant assignments for the course implementation at the Fanshawe site.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by jay