Technology for enhancing online learning and collaboration

Online Nursing Education

As in almost any subject area today, online education has transformed the climate for nursing education as more and more of the curricula is delivered remotely in completely online or in hybrid fashion combining some students visits to a physical site. In this essay, the author will write about the effects of online learning collaboration upon nursing education. We will identify an important online collaboration or community building technology that has already been integrated into online nursing education practice. We will also examine online collaboration tools by examining social media such as Facebook and Twitter and the effects of this upon nursing education.

In online learning, E-learning has emerged as a new standard in modern higher education. E-learning market had grown by 2008 by 35.6%. However, there have been a number of problems.. Not much is known regarding the reason that many users stop online learning after their immersion.

Previous research has suggested factors that might affect user satisfaction with e-Learning. This study developed an integrated model with six dimensions: learners, instructors, courses, technology, design, and environment. A survey published in Computers and Education investigated the critical factors affecting learners' satisfaction in e-Learning. The survey demonstrated that instructor attitudes toward e-Learning, student computer anxiety, e-Learning course quality, e-Learning course flexibility, perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, and assessment diversity in assessments greatly affected students' perceived satisfactions (Sun, Tsai, Finger, Deschenes & Yeh, 2008, 1183-1184).

Most of the above factors that are software, webware, or website related can be mediated by good technology and expertise. However, human anxiety is trickier to deal with. Much of the student anxiety deals with the lack of tangible contact with the instructors or other students participating in the course, especially with the lack of spontaneity in asymmetric courses. Some individuals however are also nervous about the instant messaging that happens in online classrooms, so the problem is more complicated than just improving the course dynamic. Certainly, pedagogy may be an issue. Whatever the case, human anxiety is a critical issue in the employment of Web 2.0 technology in nursing education. In an article in Nursing Education Perspectives, the issue is raised as to whether social media such as Twitter could bridge the gap. It appears that Twitter may provide a social media that ties classes together and builds classroom comradery and community in the online classroom. Faculty interviewed in the article have reported success in this area. They report that the ability to send an unshared message to the instructor was helpful and may help reduce student anxiety (Skiba, 2008, 110-111).

It appears to this author that Twitter has tremendous potential, not just in the area of class community building and reduction of student anxiety, but also in developing and adapting the tool because of the handy diagnostic tools available to analyze bands of tweets regarding subject matter. The use in the classroom could be used as a supplement to the standard online courseware in live online courses in order to preserve student privacy, thereby easing the student anxiety about the new technologies.