Managing Large Enrollments and Adjunct Faculty for Clinical and Online Teaching In Nursing Education

Nursing Education and Managing Large Enrollments and Adjunct Faculty for Clinical & Online Teaching

Managing Large Enrollments for Online Courses In Nursing Education, Adjunct Faculty for Clinical an Online Teaching In Nursing Education.

Managing Large Enrollments for Online Courses In Nursing Education

    Educator shortages, increased student enrollment, and pressures to admit additional students to nursing programs have led to faculty teaching classes with larger enrollments, including traditional online courses. 

    Although there is no evidence to indicate that the quality of teaching and learning is less in larger classes such that students are dissatisfied, faculty are responsible for ensuring quality learning experiences in their courses and need to consider strategies for facilitating learning when course enrollment increases. What is a large class? 

    The answer to this question depends on the nature of the student (beginner or advanced, graduate or undergraduate); the type of content (simple or complex, easy to learn or difficult to learn, applied in similar or novel circumstances); the experience of the faculty (novice or expert); and the design of the course (first time, in draft form and well designed, tested and revised). 

    Current evidence indicates that, in general, an online class size of 20 can be taught by one faculty member (Colwell & Jenks, 2006). One study revealed no significant difference in student perception of quality in online discussion between small (12 students) and medium (25 students) class size (Bristol & Kyarsgaard , 2012). 

    Some authors have indicated 25 students to be an appropriate enrollment for an online course (Lahaie, 2007b). A few institutions have established a maximum enrollment for online courses because of the increased time commitment for the faculty. Policies regarding class size vary among institutions. 

    When teaching a traditional online course with large enrollments, faculty must ensure that the course is designed for maximum learning, educational practices are designed to promote learning, and discussion forums are managed to foster higher-order learning. For courses in which enrollment surpasses 15 or so students, it may be more effective to divide the students into smaller discussion groups. 

    These smaller groups encourage interactions among students while allowing faculty to focus on the outcomes of individual and group work. The amount of time spent providing feedback to and grading students' work increases as class size increases. Faculty can choose teaching and evaluation strategies that promote learning while limiting the faculty time required to respond to nonsignificant issues. 

    Fewer carefully designed assignments that prompt practice and feedback and foster higher order learning are preferable to more assignments that require the faculty or students to process information in lower levels of the cognitive or affective domains. As described earlier, faculty can also create opportunities for feedback that students themselves and their classmates are capable of providing. 

    Faculty may also use “sampling” strategies for grading, whereby faculty read only selected portions of student writing during formative development of written work or read only selected (but varied) portions of care plans, reflection papers, journals, and other written work that is in formative development. 

    Finally, the use of grading rubrics makes expectations clear to students, maximizes the likelihood of success on the assignment, and simplifies the grading process for faculty. Teaching assistants may be used to help manage the communication generated by larger classes (Parker & Howland, 2006). 

    Depending on the knowledge and preparation of the teaching assistant, teaching assistants can grade papers, facilitate discussion, provide feedback on drafts, answer questions, and assist students with technology problems. Teaching in an online course as a teaching assistant or teaching practicum is one way to prepare nurses and students for future roles as educators. 

    Despite the potential increase in time demands for faculty who teach online, faculty do experience the same convenience and flexibility in teaching online courses as students enrolled in online courses do. With careful planning, faculty can incorporate their responsibilities for online teaching into their schedules at a time that is most convenient for them. 

    Faculty can remain in contact with their students even when they are traveling and attending professional conferences. Online teaching helps to promote maximum flexibility in balancing the demands of the various aspects of the faculty role: teaching, scholarship, and service.

Adjunct Faculty for Clinical an Online Teaching In Nursing Education

    Adjunct faculty are a critical part of the nursing education workforce. Programs rely on them to meet clinical, didactic, and online learning instructional needs (Santisteban & Egues, 2014). Part-time faculty may be responsible for the clinical education of nursing students (American Nurses Association (ANA), 2010) or they may teach online courses. 

   These nurse educators are asked to fulfill vacant positions or allow for flexible expansion and contraction of program size (Brannagan & Oriol, 2014). But adjunct faculty face many challenges. They may have limited exposure to experienced, full-time nurse educators, making opportunities for role modeling scarce. 

    It may be assumed that adjunct faculty arrive armed with the knowledge and expertise to teach nursing students, but they may lack teaching acumen (Santisteban & Egues, 2014). Not all adjunct faculty lack teaching experience, however. Online faculty have discovered that they can teach for multiple nursing programs at the same time because they are not geographically bound to one area or region, and have no commute time to employment. 

    The online faculty member can log in and teach several courses each day without leaving the keyboard. This flexible workforce can bring a wealth of expertise to multiple programs and to every class they teach, and in turn this can enrich the learning environment of their students. 

    Adjunct faculty may have less motivation to attend to their teaching responsibilities because of low salaries, conflicts with full-time employment demands, lack of job security, and inadequate support for teaching and scholarship (Brannagan & Oriol, 2014). Overcoming these challenges requires the collaboration of nursing education, nursing practice, and nursing research (Santisteban & Egues, 2014). 

    Exposure to pedagogy and the role of the educator should be part of all nursing education to prepare nurses to understand the intricacies of teaching. Nurse educators in practice settings can provide in service education about precepting nursing students who affiliate with their facilities. 

    Further research needs to be conducted on how to prepare, recruit, and retain adjunct faculty. Offering nurses in clinical practice an opportunity to try teaching as an adjunct may prompt more to choose an academic career (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2013). Nursing programs need an infrastructure that supports adjunct faculty (American Nurses Association [ANA], 2010). 

    The Online Adjunct Faculty Mentoring Model recommends pairing a full time faculty mentor with an adjunct faculty mentee (Brannagan & Oriol, 2014). The adjunct faculty coordinator is responsible for introducing the new educator to the online environment to ensure that they understand the role and job responsibilities. 

    A critical component to successful use of an adjunct or part time workforce is recruitment. Potential candidates should be screened for their skills in communicating online (eg, submission of electronic forms). Once employed, the new educator completes a series of online, asynchronous learning modules that mimic teaching in an online course. 

    The mentor and mentee meet via web-conferencing tools to discuss experiences and build rapport. Brannagan and Oriol (2014) point out that not all faculty are naturally inclined to be mentors. Those who show a desire to help new faculty and accept the responsibility to undergo orientation and training.