The Pedagogical Shift During COVID-19 Pandemic: Emergency Remote Learning Practices in Nursing and its Effectiveness

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic has adversely affected the education system worldwide; consequently, education has been shifted to remote learning mode. There is still confusion regarding the effectiveness of remote learning compared to in-person education. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the perceived effectiveness and factors affecting emergency remote learning practices by administering online questionnaires. The study selected 254 participants (200 nursing students and 54 faculty) randomly from the five constituent nursing campuses of Tribhuvan University. A structured online questionnaire was developed in a google doc and an electronic link was shared to each of the participants. A self-generated excel sheet was transferred to SPSS Version 20 for the analysis. The result indicates that 46.2% of students used smartphones and almost all faculty used laptops for classes during COVID 19 pandemic. Students and faculty spent 11.45 ±8.43 and 4.26 ±2.05 hours respectively per week in class and >80% of respondents felt that the sessions were overloaded. PowerPoint slides, document sharing, chat, emails, and video conferences were the tools used for class. Most of them faced internet and electricity problems in between. Almost all respondents preferred live classes over recorded classes; 71% students and 59% of faculty were not interested in online classes. The remote learning method of teaching was less effective than face-to-face learning for 33.5% of students and 59.2% of faculty. To conclude, although there has been increased student-teacher communication, cooperation between students and active learning, the overall effectiveness of remote learning is decreased. Hence, there is a crucial need for a strategy to enhance effectiveness.