Institutional Planning for Online Learning, Terms and Conditions for Online or distant Education Plans In Nursing Education

Nursing Education and Institutional Planning for Online Learning, Terms and Conditions for Online or distant Education Plans

Institutional Planning for Online Learning In Nursing Education, Terms and Conditions for Online or distant Education Plans In Nursing Education.

Institutional Planning for Online Learning In Nursing Education

    Many issues must be considered when the decision is made to engage in online education. To successfully plan, implement, and evaluate online education, institutions and individual programs must identify how the government and accrediting organizations influence their decisions.

     Judith Eaton (2014), the president of the Council for Higher Education, has described the Higher Education Act as where the federal government, colleges and universities, and accreditation meet. The US Department of Education spends approximately $30 billion a year to subsidize higher education through student aid and institutional grants (Edwards & McCluskey, 2009). 

   Eaton (2014) asserts that the department has been calling into question the effectiveness of accreditation to establish and evaluate quality in educational institutions. The Higher Education Act is one way for the government to assume more control over accreditation, but this may diminish academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and peer review (Eaton, 2014). 

    Others argue that breaking the stranglehold that accreditation has on colleges and universities will free them to explore innovative approaches to teaching and learning, including those delivered online, that would be less likely to achieve accreditation. Institutions must identify the needed infrastructure for online education, how it will be sustained, and how faculty and student development and support needs will be met. 

    It is common for planning committees consisting of administrators, technology staff, student support personnel, and faculty to be charged with addressing and monitoring these issues. The various perspectives of each of these individuals are important when designing a model for online education that can be sustained within the institution. 

    Policies and procedures specific to online education may need to be developed within the institution. Before implementing online education, the institution and program need to give some consideration to how offering online courses or programs fits with the mission of the institution. Administrators and faculty should be clear about the forces that are driving the desire to deliver online education. 

    Is the institution or nursing program interested in primarily serving and retaining the current student population, or in extending course or program offerings to a wider target audience, perhaps even serving a global market? 

    An understanding of the reasons for engaging in online education will help guide marketing decisions. Before an online course or program is developed, it can be helpful to conduct an environmental scan to gauge the market and identify which other universities are offering online education and the nature of the courses offered online. 

    What niche does the proposed course or program fill that is not being met by another institution? A needs assessment can also be conducted among prospective students to identify the level of interest in enrolling in an online course or program and the reasons for their interest in online education, as well as the level of computer skills and availability of Internet access present within the targeted population. 

    Having this information before an online offering is planned can help ensure that the learners' educational needs will be met. It is also important to acknowledge that some of the most strategic marketing of online education may need to occur “internally” within the institution (Billings, 2002). 

    Online education is still new to many faculty, students, and administrators. Faculty who are “early adopters” of technology and online education will need to communicate the potential advantages of online learning to faculty who are more skeptical. Institutions have reported that using benchmark standards helps ensure quality in online courses (Leners, Wilson, & Sitzman, 2007; Little, 2009). 

    To promote the development of quality online education courses and programs, quality indicators and benchmarks have been established by professional organizations and accrediting bodies for institutions to use when planning online programs and courses. There are numerous regulatory influences on the delivery of online and distant learning. At the federal level, the US Department of Education has state authorization policies that are tied to Title IV funding (Field, 2014). 

    Distance programs must demonstrate compliance with laws in each state in which they operate or their students are not eligible for federal grants and loans. Most states have established guidelines for the delivery of distance education through the government bodies that regulate higher education, which include state boards of nursing. At times, there is conflict between a state's board of education and board of nursing in terms of what each requires for approval of distance education programs. 

    This can cause confusion for a nursing program that must satisfy both. There can be wide variation in the regulations among the boards of education and nursing within a state. In addition, there is variation in the regulations among the boards of nursing in the US The National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) has examined the regulations for distance education among the boards of nursing and has found inconsistencies in requirements. 

    One example is for faculty who teach clinical and didactic courses (Lowery & Spector, 2014). Some states require that faculty hold licenses only in the home state where the program is located. Others require that faculty be licensed not only in the home state but also in the host states where the students reside and participate in clinical. Sometimes these requirements change depending on whether the course taught is a didactic or clinical course. 

    Other differences relate to the qualifications, licensing, and monitoring of preceptors. Online programs find that they may be blocked from offering their programs to potential nursing students in a particular state because they cannot satisfy every boards' conflicting requirements. Boards of nursing are encouraged to consider adopting the Middle States Commission on Higher Education Interregional Guidelines for the Evaluation of Distance Education (Lowery & Spector, 2014). 

    These have already been endorsed by all regional accrediting organizations and organizations that participate in the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement. The nationally accepted guidelines reflect institutional, faculty, and curricular themes. 

Terms and Conditions for Online or distant Education Plans In Nursing Education

    Regulatory guidelines for prelicensure programs have been developed by the NCSBN Distance Learning Education Committee. These include the following: 

1. The guidelines for approval should be the same for distance programs as the home state where the program is located. 

2. The home state's board of nursing approves the prelicensure program, which includes the distance component. 

3. The home state program supervises prelicensure students in the host states. 

4. Those who teach clinical experiences to prelicensure students in distance programs must hold a current, active license in the state where the patient is located. Faculty who only teach didactic content need a current, active license in the program's home state. 

5. Boards of nursing will report on prelicensure student clinical students in host states. 

    These best practices, if adopted, help ensure that the innovations made possible by technology to offer nursing programs at a distance are carried out in a manner that maintains quality and safety for patients receiving care from prelicensure nursing students. Examples of frequently referenced quality indicators include those established by the Online Learning Consortium (2014), formerly known as the Sloan Consortium or Sloan-C. 

    The Online Learning Consortium promotes online learning worldwide through research and development of best practices that are disseminated through various publications and conferences. The Institute for Higher Education Policy (Hunter & Krantz, 2010) is another entity that sets quality indicators and benchmarks. Quality Matters (QM, 2014) is a nonprofit organization that sets national benchmarks for online course design. 

    These organizations identify essential elements that must be addressed to ensure quality in online education: institutional support and commitment; effective course design and teaching–learning principles, faculty development, support, and satisfaction; student support and satisfaction; and outcome evaluation related to learning effectiveness. 

    How each institution decides to address these elements will vary depending on the resources available to the institution and the specific needs of educators and learners. Accrediting agencies expect that online courses and programs will provide learners with access to learning experiences that achieve the same learning outcomes of traditional “in-class” courses and programs. 

    Online students should receive the same level of support, socialization, and skill development as their on-campus counterparts. Faculty need to develop their expertise in using technology for teaching and learning. Everyone must be given adequate technical support. 

    Specific accreditation policies and standards may be written to govern distance and online students such as verification of the identity of the student. The three professional nursing accrediting bodies, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN), and the Commission for Nursing Education Accreditation (CNEA), have established standards for distance education programs that state the expectation that learner outcomes will be evaluated using appropriate methodology and with the same rigor associated with traditional face to face courses (Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing [ACEN], 2014; American Association of Colleges of Nursing [AACN], 2007; National League for Nursing Commission for Nursing Education Accreditation, 2015). 

    In addition, many institutions have internal approval processes that must be followed to approve a course or program for online delivery before it can be offered to students. Faculty should familiarize themselves with the guidelines that apply to their particular state, institution, and program as they undertake the planning of online learning programs. 

    A growing challenge for accrediting agencies is their role in evaluating the quality of MOOCs as more colleges and universities explore this avenue for delivering their product (Eaton, 2012).