Did an AI course improve nursing students' skills? Self-rated literacy rose—but the study did not test clinical performance
After a 10-week blended course, 72 first-year nursing students reported higher AI literacy than 70 second-year controls. Academic year and group were inseparable, outcomes were self-reported and there was no long-term or patient-care test.
The short version
- What happened
- The intervention combined 12 hours of online lessons with six hours of workshops on generation, evaluation, ethics and simple agent-building over 10 weeks.
- Who it affects
- Student nurses may benefit from supervised practice that includes verification and ethics, but educators still need objective evidence that those lessons transfer to clinical decisions and patient safety.
- What remains unproven
- Single university and 142 analysed students
Keep in mind
Single university and 142 analysed students
Convenience sample with non-random allocation
Academic year completely confounded with group
Routine rather than attention-matched control
Immediate self-report outcomes
No objective knowledge, clinical-performance or patient outcome measure
Source analysis · 1 linked source. Primary analysed source date: 27 October 2026.
Read the full report · 4 min The evidence, methods, implications and limitations
The course mixed concepts, practice and responsible-use teaching
A peer-reviewed quasi-experiment at Lishui University in China found higher self-rated AI literacy after a structured course for nursing undergraduates. The programme gave 72 first-year students 12 hours of online learning and six hours of supervised workshops over 10 weeks. Topics included generative text and images, simple agent development, nursing teaching materials, report writing, privacy, bias and checking AI output. Seventy second-year students continued the routine nursing curriculum and could use public AI tools independently.
The researchers recruited 160 students and analysed the 142 who completed valid pre- and post-course questionnaires. Trained assistants who were not involved in analysis collected the surveys. The comparison therefore measured a supported AI curriculum against normal teaching, not AI access against no access and not a single chatbot against another teaching method. Nearly half of the analysed students already reported daily AI use, so the result is about structure and supervision rather than first exposure.[1]
Self-rated AI literacy showed the clearest difference
On the 12-to-84 AI Literacy Scale, the intervention group's mean rose from 55.67 to 65.01, while the control mean moved from 53.01 to 54.19. After adjusting for baseline score, previous AI training, use frequency and digital literacy, adjusted post-course means were 64.92 and 53.91: a difference of 11.01 points (95% confidence interval 8.55 to 13.47). The within-group effect size for the intervention was 0.66, and the adjusted model's partial eta-squared was 0.367.
Attitude scores also favoured the course by 4.60 points on a 15-to-75 scale. That should not be simplified to greater enthusiasm. Exploratory results indicated stronger awareness of risks as well as uses, which could reflect a more critical stance. The study assessed questionnaires immediately after teaching; it did not ask students to identify hallucinations in a blinded task, protect simulated patient data, make a clinical decision or demonstrate safer care.[1]
The distinction that matters
What was measured—and what was not
The strongest result was a questionnaire score, not an observed nursing outcome.
Course
72 first-year students; 18 hours
Self-rated literacy increased
Control
70 second-year students; routine curriculum
No comparable literacy change
Missing test
No randomization or clinical task
Causality and workplace transfer unknown
The design cannot establish that the course caused the gap
Allocation followed the timetable rather than chance: first-year students received the course and second-year students formed the control group. Academic year was therefore completely confounded with the intervention and could not be adjusted away. The groups looked similar on measured baseline characteristics, but experience, maturity, workload or adaptation to university could still account for part of the result. Eighteen recruited students were not in the final analysis, and the paper does not turn that attrition into an intention-to-treat comparison. A routine-curriculum control also received less structured attention than the course group.
Autonomous-learning scores illustrate the problem. They did not significantly improve in the intervention group; the adjusted difference arose because control scores fell sharply. No formal group-by-time interaction was tested, so the paper does not establish that the course protected autonomy. For nursing schools, the study offers a reproducible 18-hour curriculum to test, not proof of clinical readiness. Randomized or year-matched studies with objective tasks, delayed follow-up and observed placement performance would provide stronger evidence.[1]