[The nursing field in education]

"Campus Extens" is a new correspondence course/open university educational project which makes use of new technologies in communication such as the Internet or videoconferences for the diffusion of its course content. This program commenced in 1997 as a provisional experimental program at the University of the Balearic Islands; at present, after six years up and running, this program is an established program. Classes in nursing were introduced as part of this program, due to a request by the Nursing Department, in an experimental provisional format since the academic year 2001-02 hoping to integrate new educational technologies and bring these closer to students in the Balearic Isles who find it difficult to attend traditional classes which are taught on the Palma campus and at the same time to make future correspondence courses possible. Taking the pedagogical materials which correspond to the Nursing Fundamentals course as an example, the authors describe the characteristics of this system, the educational model implemented, the didactic strategies which are used in this virtual classroom environment, as well as the methodological arrangement and the didactic materials which have been developed for this program. Finally, the authors want to point out that the participation of Nursing in this program has enabled the Nursing Department to respond to the educational and professional demands of the University of the Balearic Islands, to reflect critically about teaching methodology, to bring the School of Nursing and Physiotherapy closer to our university community and to design new projects for future correspondence/open university courses.