Nursing Students’ Evolving Perceptions of Online Learning: A Hierarchy of Curricula

Many nursing programs had relatively light online learning components before the COVID-19 pandemic. The transition to fully online courses without preliminary planning represented a problematic shock to most nursing students and faculty. To understand students’ perceptions of the critical success of online learning factors, an empirical comparison was conducted of nursing (n = 126) and non-nursing students (n = 1766) with similar demographic characteristics, but in different timeframes. A two-sample t-test was conducted for each question to ascertain significant differences in student perceptions between nursing and non-nursing students. While the ranking of critical success factors was similar for nursing and other students, the perceptions of nursing students were generally far more critical of the capability of online learning due, partially due to the perception that the online medium is less well suited to nursing education, and partially to instructional challenges caused by the rapid transition and chaos caused by the pandemic. The pandemic provided an inferior initial exposure to online nursing education in programs that had not previously prepared for online instruction, but had an abnormally increased demand for more online education. Without aggressive efforts to improve online teaching in programs with similar circumstances, students’ perceptions of overall quality may not improve significantly in the long term.