Emergency Remote Learning in Nursing Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Online Learning
• Pandemic Response

Background:

• COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a shift to non-face-to-face education globally.
• Nursing colleges implemented emergency remote learning (ERL) to ensure continuity of education.
• The rapid transition to ERL required adaptation from educators and institutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the international status and effectiveness of Emergency Remote Learning in nursing education.
• To identify commonly used online tools and platforms in ERL for nursing.
• To evaluate nursing educators' perceptions of ERL during the pandemic.

Main Methods:

• Development of a multilingual questionnaire (7 languages).
• International distribution of the questionnaire to 18 countries.
• Data collection from 328 nursing educators worldwide.

Main Results:

• Social networking (Facebook, Google+) and video sharing (YouTube) were the most utilized online methods.
• Emergency Remote Learning in nursing education received a positive evaluation score of 3.59 out of 5.
• Nursing college professors demonstrated significant adaptation to ERL over two semesters.

Conclusions:

• Nursing educators successfully adapted to emergency remote learning during the COVID-19 crisis.
• The pandemic has permanently altered the educational landscape, requiring sustained integration of ' untact' (non-face-to-face) educational strategies.
• Nursing education must proactively prepare for the future of 'untact' learning environments.