Effectiveness of agile methodology on metacognitive ability, and clinical performance among nursing students—An interventional study

BACKGROUND: The emerging trend focuses on the need for an active agile method in the nursing curriculum. It helps to improve student engagement, the interaction between the students and teachers, higher-order thinking, teamwork, and practical skills. This study was done to assess the effectiveness of agile methodology on metacognitive ability and clinical performance among nursing students. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In this interventional study, two groups of the pre–post design were adopted. Each college was considered a cluster. By using the chit method, the colleges (four) were randomly selected for the experimental and control groups. To avoid contamination, all the fourth-year students were included either in the experimental group (133) or the control groups (132), respectively. The pretest was conducted using a metacognitive awareness inventory (metacognitive ability (MA)) and an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) tool (clinical performance (CP)) in the experimental and control groups. Leaders were selected using leader attribute inventory (leadership ability (LA) in the pretest and posttest 2 among the experimental and control groups before the agile teaching. By using agile methodology, the newborn course was taught for 21 days in the experimental group. To assess the effectiveness of agile methodology, the control group was not given any teaching. Posttests were conducted immediately and after 1 week to assess the MA and CP in the experimental and control groups. The control group had agile training for 10 days after the posttests to understand the newer agile methodology. The data were analyzed by using SPSS version 28. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to assess the data for effectiveness. RESULTS: The result showed that there is an improvement in the metacognitive ability (MA) score and clinical performance score over time in the experimental group (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: The study finding supports that incorporating agile methodology in education impacts the metacognitive ability and clinical performance among nursing students. However, the teacher must be familiar with the methodology while incorporating agile in teaching.