Characteristics of Academic Coaches in an Online RN-to-BSN Program.

Abstract

To achieve the growth of RN-to-Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) programs in the face of ongoing faculty shortages, many large online RN-to-BSN programs have embraced the use of academic coaches to assist with course delivery. An associational analysis of data collected from academic coaches and their student and faculty evaluators was performed on a sample of academic coaches who were teaching students enrolled in a large online RN-to-BSN program. The multilevel data consisted of 94 coaches who taught in 166 courses. Evaluation data from 12,004 students were captured and connected to each academic coach and course. Overall, the RN-to-BSN coaches received favorable ratings by both instructors and students alike. The use of academic coaches can help to expand capacity while delivering a high-quality educational experience. These results indicate that satisfaction with academic coaches has the potential to be very high, from both the students' and the faculty members' perspectives. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(9):520-525.].