Dissertation Proposal Announcement Ed.D. Program: Jane Ferrick “A Time Management Intervention for Undergraduate Nursing Students: Supporting Epistemic Cognition”

Although students have access to various time management tools to assist with planning their time, students often struggle to effectively implement and sustain their use, suggesting a more profound cognitive disconnect in how they understand the self-regulation involved in managing their time. While time management interventions such as calendars, planners, and skill-building workshops are commonly offered through campus learning centers, these tools often emphasize surface-level scheduling rather than the deeper cognitive and metacognitive processes that influence students’ ability to sustain effective time use (Mingo et al., 2024). Research and practice suggest that students often struggle with enacting these strategies, leading to tool abandonment and disruption in academic progression, particularly when facing competing priorities and unpredictable environmental demands (Critz & Feagai, 2014; Sadeghi et al., 2024) This study seeks to investigate whether an intervention grounded in Hadwin and Winne’s (2021) COPES model and incorporating collaborative reflection supports students develop a deeper understanding of time management principles for planning, prioritization, and adaptation.

This study is a time management intervention that takes place over six weeks in the twelve-week summer semester. The structure of the intervention includes the completion of an individual task analysis worksheet as well as a collaborative learning diary with five peers enrolled in a required nursing course titled 2+2 Academic and Professional Development. Students will co-construct a set of time management guidelines within their assigned peer group during weeks four and five the intervention and then take part in a virtual viewing party in week six where they will individually provide feedback to the other groups. Select data points will be gathered from the products created throughout the intervention: task analysis worksheets, learning diaries, co-constructed guidelines lines, and feedback from the viewing party. In addition, participants will complete a pre and post-test using the Time Management Behavior Scale (TMBS) to serve as a method for triangulating the data.

Findings from this study may inform the design of time management interventions that move beyond strategy instruction toward more sustained applications within authentic learning contexts.