Transitioning to Full Online Teaching During Covid-19 Crisis: The Associate Degree Nurse Faculty Experience

Abstract

As the COVID-19 crisis escalated in early 2020, schools of nursing and nursing programs in the United States and around the world shut down. Nurse faculty were forced transition to online teaching in a short time. Descriptive phenomenology was used to explore the experiences of associate degree nurse faculty who transitioned to online teaching during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inductive thematic analysis was performed on the interview data from 41 faculty teaching at associate degree nursing programs in the U.S. The findings of the study are presented under 6 main themes: stressful/overwhelming, feeling emotionally and physically exhausted, support, new knowledge and growth under pressure, new opportunities for nursing education, and leadership in times of crisis. To prevent the worsening of the nurse faculty shortage and help educate nurses for the future, nurse educators must be supported and recognized for their work during this period and beyond.

Serious Games as a Method for Enhancing Learning Engagement: Student Perception on Online Higher Education During COVID-19

“…This pedagogical model, which generates a playful learning environment, can serve as an innovation strategy for online or hybrid education systems, because this more frequent environment for students promotes learning in a more relaxed environment, reduces anxiety, and avoids a stressful or overwhelming environment ( Iheduru-Anderson and Foley, 2021 ). On the one hand, previous studies reveal that students prefer hybrid education systems, multiple resources, and complementary technologies ( Pagoto et al, 2021 ).…”

“…At the university level, online transition was particularly difficult for courses and undergraduate programs in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) and health sciences. The reason underlying this notion is the specific features of learning strategies in these areas, including active lectures, hands-on laboratories, and research projects, among others, which require highly specific technology for developing online courses ( Iheduru-Anderson and Foley, 2021 ; Pagoto et al, 2021 ; Jeffries et al, 2022 ). These characteristics of the time of crisis in higher education have also been present in the COVID context of Chilean universities.…”

Prelicensure Nursing Students’ Reflections on Institutional Response to the 2020 COVID-19 Crisis

“…The COVID-19 pandemic caused a rapid change from face-to-face learning to an online learning environment. As academia shifted to online learning, many nurse faculty and students experienced varying levels of stress and support ( Iheduru-Anderson & Foley, 2021 ), and the students’ individual ability to access resources and adjust to current conditions contributed to the findings of this study.…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic brought on many challenges, especially in education. Previous studies have focused on nurses’ experiences ( Iheduru-Anderson, 2020 ), faculty experiences with the transition to online teaching ( Iheduru-Anderson & Foley, 2021 ), the experiences of students nursing on the frontline ( Leigh et al, 2020 ), and students as healthcare aides ( Casafont et al., 2021 ). Despite the disruption of higher education teaching and learning, and support infrastructure caused by the pandemic, no study has focused on the academic support of nursing students during the pandemic.…”

What’s in Your Culture? Embracing Stability and the New Digital Age in Moving Colleges of Health Professions Virtually during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Experiential Narrative Review

“…The faculty did not neglect to reach out for technical and technological support, training and mentoring in 2020, proving useful in 2021 when mitigations continued to stay in place in various places around the world [63,65]. Nonetheless, the fast transition was perceived to be overwhelming by students and faculty members [66].…”