Faculty In Nursing Education and Online web Based Learning Uniqueness
Design Screens With Eye Appeal
Colors should provide good contrast so that the student can read text. Never use pastel text on a light background. Use large print and easy to read print fonts, such as Arial or Times Roman, so that students don't get eyestrain. Color, font style and size, and movement (such as found in animation) can be used to draw attention to important points and maintain interest.
Present content in the same order you list the objectives to make it easy for students to follow the learning trajectory you planned for your course. Incorporate graphics, videos, photos, and other visuals as much as possible (as long as they enhance learning) because people respond to visual learning aids. Never make the screen busy with “cutesy” things like butterflies in the background or other things that distract from your content.
Make Learning Fun In Educational Environment
Develop or search out public domain case studies that make learning difficult content fun. A teacher should strive to be an entertainer as well as a conveyor of knowledge. Remember the history of the television show All in the Family. It uses comedy, lovable and sometimes unlovable characters, and drama to make some very important points about human dignity and justice.
Even people who were reared in racist environments watched that show despite the fact that its content was diametrically opposed to their personal beliefs. It probably brought home the unfairness and wrongness of racial and ethnic discrimination to many people who would otherwise never have questioned their beliefs.
People learn and retain knowledge better when it is fun to learn. We have had games in our Informatics courses in which the students had a contest to find the best sites for things like ergonomics research. In order to make learning to use the online library more fun, we have a treasure hunt in which the teacher provides hints about a particular journal article, and the students use the hints to do an online OVID search to try and find a nursing article that fits all the hints.
In order to find the article, they have to learn to limit their search by years, topics, and full-text papers. We also had a game in which students were asked to find one credible and one untrustworthy site for a particular medical problem. They had to search out the Internet and the professional literature to find out who the author was, if the author had a professional affiliation with a credible institution, and if he or she was providing professional information or personal opinion.
Several students have told us that after playing the game, they never again assumed the validity of something on the Web; they always check out the source. Some things will always require hard study and work. (Children still have to memorize the multiplication tables.) But teachers should always remember that learning is much easier and better retained when teachers and parents can make a game of learning.
Design Course to Achieve Stated Objectives In Nursing Education
Ensure that class “lectures,” case studies, and assignments are designed to assist the student to achieve the stated objectives. Students legitimately dislike busywork. They resent assignments if they cannot understand why they are doing them. Good teachers give assignments that are designed to meet explicit learning objectives, and the learning materials should make clear what each part of the course contributes to the students' learning process.
Real Time Requirements and Use of Technology In Nursing Education
Decide whether to require any real time learning experiences. Chat rooms and audio conferencing technology can be effective ways to provide for class discussion and can give teachers important outlets for their need to personally share their expertise with students in a direct way. However, real time experiences may be inconvenient in the extreme for students who live in widely different time zones.
If the student body is limited to North and South America, a reasonable time for a real-time experience might be noon Central Standard Time (CST). That would have students in the east online at 1:00 pm Students on Mountain Standard Time would get online at 11:00 am; while students on Pacific Standard Time would join the class at 10:00 am, Alaska at 9:00 am, the Aleutian Islands at 8:00 am Students in Hawaii would have to sign on at 7:00 am A real time experience scheduled for 8:00 am Eastern Standard Time requires Californians to sign on at 5:00 am and Hawaiians at 2:00 am Clearly, a course that has students from around the world must carefully consider any real-time experiences.
Develop Assignments and Explicit Grading Criteria In Nursing Education
Make assignments and grading criteria available to students in the syllabus. An advantage of Internet courses is that they can allow students to plan their class work schedules at their own convenience. Distance students often are people with erratic and demanding work schedules who work in nontraditional ways. For example, a student may have no time to work on the course 1 week but may spend 2 or 3 entire days another week. Instructors must also control their schedules.
Therefore, a student submitting an assignment early does not necessarily mean the faculty has to grade it early. Students like quick feedback, so the syllabus should clearly state that early papers may not be graded until the due date because due dates are one way teachers plan their own work schedules. By all means, have due dates. Due dates help students discipline themselves to get projects done.
The teacher should consider having grade penalties for late work. However, working adults will sometimes need 2 or 3 day extensions. We find it most helpful to require students to ask for extensions and always include a new due date for the extension. Procrastinators may be poorly disciplined, but they also may be people who have great need for flexibility because of work and family demands.
The most successful attitude is directed toward facilitating students' work, not toward punitive actions. We contract, cajole, and encourage students to get their work in. We are not comfortable threatening students with an F grade except in the most extreme cases. For example, we must remind students of the consequence of non completion when they still haven't completed their work more than a month or two after the end of the course.
Some students do find after they enroll that they simply do not have what it takes to complete an online course. Despite our flexibility, it is always students' responsibility to manage their time.Withdrawal dates should be generous. People should have at least until midterm to withdraw without receiving an F. The teacher should schedule enough assignments during the first half of the course so that a substantial workload hits in the first 4 weeks.
That way, students will have a chance to determine early if they cannot handle the workload. If they aren't going to be able to do their work, and the course is group work dependent, the student can withdraw and the teacher can make adjustments to work assignments. To repeat, it is best for the teacher to view the relationship as facilitation, not punitive.
Take an Active Role in Facilitating Class Discussion
Most students will not use the discussion facilities unless it is a class requirement. They begin by greatly preferring to communicate only with the instructor via e-mail. This practice must be discouraged. Students need to use each other as resources, and teachers must protect their own time. It is not efficient to answer the same question 25 times to individuals.
We always copy student content questions onto the discussion board and respond to them there. Soon, students learn to use the board for content questions. The best technique we have found is to have a discussion board assignment the very first week. This approach also helps Internet support personnel manage their time. We simply let them know that the first week or two students will be required to use the discussion board, so that is when most of those technical questions will arise.
Some students will have to be nudged occasionally with an e-mail suggesting that they make some entries on the board. In most classes, there will be some eager users and some who just don't care to participate much in the class discussion. However, we have had people who were very quiet in an on-campus course become the busiest users of the discussion board. Shyness is not the barrier here. Students' time pressures may be a factor.
Give your opinion if have any.