Nursing distance education at the dawn of digital broadcasting: a case study in collaboration

For separate reasons, schools of nursing and public television stations are finding it a matter of mutual interest to work together in the production of distance education content for college nursing students in their communities. The advent of digital television (DTV) broadcasting has given these distance education partnerships new capabilities for reaching more potential students. In this article, I review one innovative collaboration between several nursing education programs and a public broadcasting service member station in South Texas. In this pilot project, nursing faculty were trained in television production techniques and became producers of DTV instructional video material. This case study demonstrates a number of ways in which nursing distance education programs can benefit by designing and delivering course material via digital broadcasting. It also highlights several difficulties that should be considered by distance educators prior to embarking on DTV curriculum development projects.