CYBER-EDUCATION: More pros than cons
One-on-one time with instructors, classmates is a reality in online doctoral programs
By Cathryn Domrose W
hen Christina M. DiNapoli,DNP,FNP-BC,RN, enrolled in the DNP program at the Johns Hopkins University School ofNursing in Baltimore, she was a little skeptical,
even though she knew the online nursing graduate program, ranked third in the nation by U.S. News&World Report in 2015, had a good reputation. She was concerned about the disconnect between seeing patients at the Weill Cornell Medical College Center for Sleep Medicine in New York where she works and signing onto a computer at the end of the day to take classes from instructors nearly 200 miles away, with classmates in different time zones who communicated mostly by email. “I was sort of worried I was going to be out there all alone,” said DiNapoli, who traveled to the nursing school campus in May 2014 to celebrate graduation with a close-knit group of new friends she had seen in person only a few times. “It was really the exact opposite.”
Tight-knit cybergroups DiNapoli said she talked more often to classmates in different states than to some friends living in the same city and felt closer to her Hopkins colleagues and instructors than to some colleagues at work. She was 10 years younger than the other students, but it didn’t matter, she said. No one ever noticed or remarked upon the age difference, which might have been more obvious in a face-to-face program. “It was great—I loved it,” she said. “I never felt alone.We’re
all talking about when we can have a reunion.” Besides offering a curriculumequal to that provided in a class-
room, successful online nursing graduate programs use technology, group projects designed for online learning, and one-on-one time with instructors to create an academic environment, foster a sense of teamwork and offer professional socialization to students who almost never see each other and may have completely different schedules, said online instructors and students in three of the nation’s top-ranked programs.
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NURSE.com/Careers • 2016 “Online programs are not correspondence programs,” said
Linda M. Goodfellow, PhD, RN, FAAN, clinical associate pro- fessor at Duquesne University School of Nursing in Pittsburgh, which has one of the 10 best online graduate nursing programs in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. “We have a community of scholars.We just have to work differently at having them be part of that community.” Enrollment in degree programs has been increasing at all levels
as nurses and employers develop higher expectations of advanced education for the profession, according to healthcare researchers. Online learning is increasingly becoming the method of choice for many. About 7.1 million students took at least one online course in 2013, reflecting an annual growth rate of 6.1%, according to the Babson Survey Research Group. To create an atmosphere of academic collegiality and commu-
nity, students and instructors use a variety of tools to duplicate interactions they would normally have in
person.Class discussions on case studies or situational problems are often held on message boards, with students contributing their portions whenever they sign on. They might write group papers or contribute to group projects on “wikis,”Web pages that allow collective contributions and edits. Real-time class meetings and discussions are held on Web conferencing sites. Instructors post videos of guest lectures and interviews and record student presentations for the entire class to see. They use Facetime or Skype for one-on-onemeetings. Students regularly communicate among themselves and with instructors through email and by phone. “Students have more access to me online than they do face
to face,” said Christell O. Bray, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, FAANP, professor and coordinator of the family nurse practitioner program at the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Texas A&MUniversity, Corpus Christi. She considers herself a night person, and a student who sends her questions at 11 p.m. might get a response faster than those restricted to daytime hours.
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