Teaching Online Courses Research Articles

A review of postoperative pain assessment records of nurses

Although there are many recommendations and guidelines for adequate pain assessment, the quality of postoperative pain documentation does not meet the acceptable standards. The aim of the study is to review the pain assessment and analgesic records of nurses within the first 48 h in the postoperative period. This retrospective and descriptive study was conducted in a University Hospital. The records of a total of 421 patients who underwent surgery between January 2014 and January 2015 were analysed. The data of the patients were obtained using the patient files. Pain assessment scale was not used, and the pain records did not include intensity, location, duration and quality of the pain. The analgesic records indicated that the highest percentage (70.8%) of analgesic use was within the first postoperative two hours. Diclofenac sodium was the most commonly administered and recorded analgesic, while pethidine HCl was the least used one. More than half of the all analgesic injections (63.9%) were administered by intramuscular route. No non-pharmacological intervention including massage, hot–cold application, or positioning was reported in the nursing records. The postoperative pain was not assessed properly as recommended in the acute pain guidelines. Therefore, nurses should increase the awareness on the pain assessment records for effective pain management. In addition, the administration of the hospital should support the use of standard pain assessment and recording via electronic patient record system, continue online education courses and give feedback on the records of nurses regarding pain management.

Issues and Challenges for Teaching Successful Online Courses in Higher Education

Online education changes all components of teaching and learning in higher education. Many empirical studies have been conducted to examine issues in delivering online courses; however, few have synthesized prior studies and provided an overview on issues in online courses. A review of literature using Cooper’s framework was conducted to identify such issues. Three major categories of findings were identified: issues related to online learners, instructors, and content development. Learners’ issues included learners’ expectations, readiness, identity, and participation in online courses. Instructors’ issues included changing faculty roles, transitioning from face-to-face to online, time management, and teaching styles. Content issues included the role of instructors in content development, integration of multimedia in content, role of instructional strategies in content development, and considerations for content development. To address these challenges in online education, higher education institutions need to provide professional development for instructors, trainings for learners, and technical support for content development.

Does digital curricula matter? An examination of online versus traditional multicultural education course delivery


 
 
 Digital curricula and online learning materials are necessary to reach the next generation of teachers. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an online introductory multicultural education course on the culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy (CRTSE) and culturally responsive teaching outcome expectancy (CRTOE) of pre-service teachers. The results suggest that online multicultural education has a moderate effect on pre-service teacher CRTSE and CRTOE. Implications are provided for pre-service teacher education and further research.
 
 

Online pre-race education improves test scores for volunteers at a marathon

ABSTRACTObjectives: This study examined whether an online course would lead to increased knowledge about the medical issues volunteers encounter during a marathon.Materials and Methods: Health care professionals who volunteered to provide medical coverage for an annual marathon were eligible for the study. Demographic information about medical volunteers including profession, specialty, education level and number of marathons they had volunteered for was collected. A 15-question test about the most commonly encountered medical issues was created by the authors and administered before and after the volunteers took the online educational course and compared to a pilot study the previous year.Results: Seventy-four subjects completed the pre-test. Those who participated in the pilot study last year (N = 15) had pre-test scores that were an average of 2.4 points higher than those who did not (mean ranks: pilot study = 51.6 vs. non-pilot = 33.9, p = 0.004). Of the 74 subjects who completed the pre-test, 54 also completed the post-test. The overall post-pre mean score difference was 3.8 ± 2.7 (t = 10.5 df = 53 p < 0.001). While subjects with all levels of volunteer experience demonstrated improvement, only change among first time marathon volunteers was significantly different from the others. Subjects reporting all degree/certification levels demonstrated improvement, but no difference in improvement was found between degree/certification levels.Conclusion: In this follow-up to the previous year’s pilot study, online education demonstrated a long-term (one-year) increase in test scores. Testing also continued to show short-term improvement in post-course test scores, compared to pre-course test scores. In general, marathon medical volunteers who had no volunteer experience demonstrated greater improvement than those who had prior volunteer experience.

Building a Sustainable Quality MattersTM Community of Practice Through Social Network Analysis

ABSTRACTThe growth of distance education has necessitated strong evidence of quality for institutions of higher education, and numerous standards and principles of quality have been developed, such as Quality Matters™ (Quality Matters). These systems are often considered only at the course level to guide design and improve student outcomes, but they can also help to pull the institution together and galvanize advancement in online development. Adopting online quality standards can be a complex process that requires changes to institutional culture. This article describes how the use of the Community of Practice (CoP) framework engaged a campus-wide network of individuals in adoption of the Quality Matters training, rubric, and review process to advance distance education support and online course development. Using Social Network Analysis, researchers were able to identify the strengths and weakness of the CoP during the early adoption phase of Quality Matters to quantitatively measure the connections among members of the community.Based on a survey administered to every participant who attended the Applying the Quality Matters Rubric™ (APPQMR) workshop, researchers analyzed connections across the Quality Matters™ (Quality Matters) Community of Practice (CoP). This analysis indicated strong cohesion of the network based on work related to distance education but low density for connections based on Quality Matters. Furthermore, it demonstrated that significant connections existed between members prior to the adoption of Quality Matters and identified key influencers within the network. The results also indicated that the Quality Matters leadership team at the institution is highly central to the Quality Matters CoP network. The results can be used to identify strategies to further adoption of Quality Matters at the institution by strengthening the CoP.

MyMOOCSpace: A cloud‐based mobile system to support effective collaboration in higher education online courses

AbstractIn recent years, institutions of higher education have been using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as an alternative to enhance and innovate traditional classroom practices. One of the approaches to this type of innovation consists of using the platforms where MOOCs are hosted for the development of courses that are aligned to their on‐campus curricular contents. They are known as Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs), which allow online access to knowledge for groups of students with a well‐defined profile. The platforms where MOOCs (and SPOCs) are hosted have been designed to support large volumes of data and visits. However, these platforms present important limitations regarding the implementation of collaborative learning activities. To address this problem, this article presents MyMOOCSpace, a cloud‐based mobile system aimed at supporting effective collaboration in MOOCs, by combining key aspects of collaboration from the research area of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) with game‐based dynamics. MyMOOCSpace has been tested in three quasi‐experiments that were run in four Latin‐American universities with a total of 68 participants. The objective was to assess its usability and its effect in enhancing collaboration among students in a SPOC. The results obtained on usability show that MyMOOCSpace is easy to use, and that participants felt pleased with while using it. Finally, it was observed that MyMOOCSpace managed to enhance interaction and collaboration among students.

Effective learning environments - the process of creating and maintaining an online continuing education tool.

Continuing medical education (CME) is an indispensable part of maintaining physicians’ competency. Since attending conferences requires clinical absenteeism and is not universally available, online learning has become popular. The purpose of this study is to conduct a retrospective analysis examining the creation process of an anesthesia website for adherence to the published guidelines and, in turn, provide an illustration of developing accredited online CME. Using Kern’s guide to curriculum development, our website analysis confirmed each of the six steps was met. As well, the technical design features are consistent with the published literature on efficient online educational courses. Analysis of the database from 3937 modules and 1628 site evaluations reveals the site is being used extensively and is effective as demonstrated by the participants’ examination results, content evaluations and reports of improvements in patient management. Utilizing technology to enable distant learning has become a priority for many educators. When creating accredited online CME programs, course developers should understand the educational principles and technical design characteristics that foster effective online programs. This study provides an illustration of incorporating these features. It also demonstrates significant participation in online CME by anesthesiologists and highlights the need for more accredited programs.

Personality traits that differentiate Attendants of Higher-Education Online Courses

This study utilized the ten aspects of the Big Five personality system to detect differences in personality traits between attendants of higher education online courses and attendants of higher education face-to-face courses. Distance education theoreticians have formulated hypotheses on the personality traits that make the Autonomy, Connectedness, Diversity, and Openness attributes of the connectivist learning model attractive. 753 participants in executive extension courses of a Peruvian university in Lima (mean age = 34.62 years) filled-in an online questionnaire which included the Big Five Aspect Scales. Whereas none of the Big Five factors discriminated between attendants and non-attendants of online courses, the former emerged as significantly higher in Industriousness (an aspect of Conscientiousness) and lower in Orderliness (the second aspect of Conscientiousness) and Enthusiasm (an aspect of Extraversion) than the latter. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are addressed and the conduct of confirmatory studies outside Peru and involving MOOCs is recommended.

The Development of QM-Fudan Higher Education Online Course Quality Standards: Some Results and Analysis

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to examine whether and how the US-based Quality Matters (QM) Higher Education Rubric-Design Standards for Online and Blended Courses apply to the Chinese higher education environment. Suitability and matchability of QM Standards are respectively examined through a questionnaire and course reviews at Fudan University, a leading research institution in China, with which Quality MattersTM has an exclusive five-year cooperation agreement to develop an adapted Chinese rubric based on the QM Standards. Cross-referencing the dimensions of suitability and matchability, QM Standards are divided into four categories, namely, Perfect, Challenging, Potential and Chicken-ribs standards. This classification helps to identify what standards are ready for adoption and what standards need to be adapted. It is found that most QM Standards are thought to be suitable for the Chinese higher education environment, but China has a long way to go to meet these standards. On the whole, QM Standards on course format, function, and basic quality elements are relatively easy for Chinese online courses to meet while the advanced standards on course quality, particularly those relating to learning outcomes, assessment and evaluation, interaction and other aspects of course design remain challenging at the present time. The research findings not only show areas of course design in China that need improvement, but also lay a solid foundation for the development of QM-Fudan Standards, which will be supplemented and improved by future practice and research based on the actual condition and progress of online education in China.

Twelve tips for developing and delivering a massive open online course in medical education

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a novel mode of online learning. They are typically based on higher education courses and can attract a high number of learners, often in the thousands. They are distinct from on-campus education and deliver the learning objectives through a series of short videos, recommended readings and discussion fora, alongside automated assessments. Within medical education the role of MOOCs remains unclear, with recent proposals including continuing professional development, interprofessional education or integration into campus-based blended learning curricula. In this twelve tips article, we aim to provide a framework for readers to use when developing, delivering and evaluating a MOOC within medical education based on the literature and our own experience. Practical advice is provided on how to design the appropriate curriculum, engage with learners on the platform, select suitable assessments, and comprehensively evaluate the impact of your course.

E-Feedback as a Scaffolding Teaching Strategy in the Online Language Classroom

Feedback plays an important role in the student learning process as it gives the learners greater insight into what they have actually done to arrive at an outcome. The importance of providing learners with feedback during the learning process comes from the fact that it highlights the difference between the intended outcome and the actual outcome, as well as the learners’ strengths and areas for improvement, thus providing a drive for change. However, providing learners with effective feedback is challenging in online settings where the physical absence of the instructor and the restrictive nature of most available online learning platforms can create a barrier to giving the appropriate feedback to the learners. In this article, I propose a freely available online technology that can be of great help to educators who teach online courses. I first review literature on the aspects that affect the quality of feedback and then demonstrate how providing e-feedback through screencast technology can positively enhance the effectiveness of feedback provided electronically in online settings. I will shed light on an empirical study conducted by the researcher in which he provided e-feedback in the form of screencasts in an online English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course with undergraduate students ( n = 87) at a British University and measured the impact of each type of feedback on the learning process and learning outcomes. Toward the end of the article, I put forth my recommendations for the best use of e-feedback technologies in any online educational setting in general, and in a language classroom in particular.

The problem of designing a digital learning ecosystem for massive online courses (Estonian experience)

Research goals: analyze of the scientists experience of Estonia for the design of digital learning ecosystem for massive online courses and distinguish the main stages and tools for the design of massive online courses. Research objectives: define the basic concepts of the research “Digital learning ecosystem” and “massive online courses” according to the analysis of scientific publications of Estonia scientists; describe the main stages of designing digital learning ecosystem for massive online courses, based on the experience of foreign researchers, including Estonia; define the basic requirements to tools for creating digital learning ecosystem and provide examples of such tools. Object of research: lifelong learning. Subject of research: creation of digital educational ecosystem massive online courses for the development of teachers’ information and communication competency. Research methods used: analysis of scientific publications. Results of the research. The study found that the world’s educational systems become the relevance massive open online courses. These courses are characterized by mass production and distribution of knowledge that takes place in the context of open online education by using information and communication technologies, including cloud computing. For the implementation and effectiveness of these courses is necessary to create a special digital learning environment. Digital learning ecosystem is the result of a combination of network tools such as software, platform and other ICT users and their use by users with competences acquired through continuous use of these services in their daily and professional activities. The main conclusions and recommendations: 1. Massive open online courses are a significant solution for of the individual lifelong learning. Infrastructure such courses should provide maximum flexibility for the main activities of their members, in particular, practice, research, study. 2. The problem of designing massive open online courses can be solved through the creation of such digital learning ecosystem that will form a combination of network tools such as software, platform and other ICT users and their use with competencies acquired through continuous use of these services in daily and professional activities. 3. According to the analysis researches of Estonian scientists the digital learning ecosystem can be created through online tools that will support the creation of electronic educational resources, joint use of electronic educational resources the participants of the educational process, re-use of electronic educational resources the participants of the educational process, review and remixes all four components.

I Can Cee You! Using Videos in Online Courses to Promote Student Engagement

Universities worldwide engage students through online learning. One challenge is the ability to promote a community of learners in an online classroom. Faculty teaching online courses can include student video discussion posts to promote engagement and the development of an online student community. Faculty integrate student video posts into graded, online discussion board assignments. Students record and upload videos into online discussion board forums and then respond to one another’s videos using text-based discussion posts. There are benefits and challenges to this teaching method. Having a strong technical support staff can ease the use of video discussion posts in online courses. Overall, video discussion posts promote a sense of community in online courses

Exploring extraneous cognitive load in an instructional process via the web conferencing system

ABSTRACTThis study, based on an online instruction via the web conferencing system, explores extraneous cognitive load and its influence on the learning process. Sixty-two sophomore students who enrolled in an online introductory programming course participated in the study. An observation form was used to analyse the course records in video format. Interviews with selected participants were conducted in order to clarify the students’ behaviours during the instructional process. The results indicated that the extraneous cognitive load elements (coherence, redundancy, modality, signalling, and temporal-spatial contiguity) influenced the instructional process. The results suggested that, in web conferencing systems extraneous cognitive load appeared not only from design features of multimedia materials but also the delivery settings. Future work is needed to put forward the influences of the load elements caused in various platforms. The implications and suggestions for instructors who plan to design and teach online courses via web conferencing were also provided.

Interview with Carol P. Christ

Interview with Carol P. Christ Elizabeth Ursic (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Carol P. Christ Click for larger view View full resolution Elizabeth Ursic Carol Christ is a trailblazer. She coedited the groundbreaking Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion with Judith Plaskow in 1979, as well as the 1989 follow-up volume, Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. In 2004, Christ was named “Leader of the Goddess Movement” in Anne Braude’s Transforming the Faiths of our Fathers: Women Who Changed American Religion. Christ has written six books in the areas of feminist study of religion and literature, feminist theology, and feminist philosophy of religion: Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (1980), Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (1987), Odyssey with the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete (1995), Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality (1998), She Who Changes: Re-Imagining the [End Page 137] Divine in the World (2003), Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology (2016, with Judith Plaskow). She is a pioneer in the search for an “embodied theological method” that combines rigorous analysis with embodied personal standpoint; in this pursuit, she often interweaves personal reflections with scholarly analysis. I became aware of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion’s Across Generations project through Mary Hunt, who mentioned Carol Christ as one of the scholars to be interviewed. I was interested because I had met Carol once in 2008 while conducting research for my PhD dissertation on Christian communities that pray with female imagery of God. Carol had been invited to keynote a conference on Faith and Feminism at Ebenezer Lutheran herchuch, one of the congregations I was studying. One of her two talks, “Why Women, Men, and Other Living Things Still Need the Goddess,” reconnected traditional male God language with male domination and violence.1 I was grateful to have an opportunity to discuss the field of women and religion with one of its early leaders. For thirty years, Carol has made her home in Greece. She directs the Ariadne Institute, through which she has led Goddess pilgrimages to Crete in the spring and the fall for over twenty years.2 Carol has taught online courses in ecofeminism, feminist and Goddess theologies, and spiritualties as an adjunct professor at the California Institute for Integral Studies. She is a weekly contributor to the blog, Feminism and Religion (www.feminismandreligion.com). She is also a political activist who has run for regional and national office with the Green Party Greece. To prepare for this article, Carol and I conducted four and a half hours of interviews in three sessions over two days in February 2015. We conducted the interviews over the phone. The recordings will be added to Carol’s archives at Smith University. Carol Christ grew up in southern California in the 1950s. She had a lower-end-of-the-middle class upbringing in a politically conservative family. Though her immediate family went to local Presbyterian churches, her grandparents and much of her extended family were Roman Catholic and Christian Science. She was valedictorian of her high school class, but her parents expected her to live at home while attending college and to teach high school art only until she got married. Carol credits three mentors, her female guidance counselor in high school and two male teachers, her undergraduate Old Testament professor and her Humanities Honors advisor, for insisting that she could go further in her [End Page 138] studies. Carol attended Stanford University on partial scholarships (where she also served meals in the dorms), followed by graduate work at Yale on Danforth and Woodrow Wilson fellowships where she became one of the first women to earn a PhD in Religious Studies in 1974. The feminist movement was burgeoning on college campuses during Carol’s time as a Yale graduate student. Carol joined the Yale Women’s Alliance, a consciousness-raising and activist feminist group in 1969, and in 1971 helped to found the Academic and Professional Women’s Ad-Hoc Affirmative Action Committee that brought a Title IX lawsuit for discrimination against Yale on behalf of...

Data Analysis for Evaluation on Course Design and Improvement of “Cyberethics” Moodle Online Courses

This study evaluates our security awareness education online course on GakuNinMoodle, which is a Shibboleth-federated Moodle platform used in Japan, via an analysis of learning data from more than 20,000 users in the 2013–2015 academic years. We develop a customized data collection method to aggregate the duration, completion status, and score of each learning object each year, which we use to evaluate changes in course design for the 2015 academic year. We further use text mining of user comments from the Moodle assignment modules to extract user opinions. We found an improvement in the completion rate and final test score obtained in the 2015 academic year compared with 2013–2014. We also found that users became polarized between those who allotted sufficient time for the course and those who did not. Additionally, we obtained user complaints about the duration required to complete the course and problems with the user interface of the Moodle SCORM module. This data analysis will be useful because Moodle is a global-standard learning management system. Further work is underway to analyze learning data and feedback in near-real time.

СПОСОБИ ІНТЕГРАЦІЇ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОГО МАСОВОГО ВІДКРИТОГО ОНЛАЙН-КУРСУ В УНІВЕРСИТЕТСЬКУ ОСВІТУ В УКРАЇНІ

Educational online courses are gaining increasing popularity. Education is one of the few areas where age and preservation of traditions are benefits. Unlike the modern offline education, this study is caused by personal motivation and desire to gain the necessary knowledge. In world practice, a concept of massive open online courses appeared long time ago. The paper provides an analytical review of ways of implementing European massive open online courses in university education of Ukraine and their capabilities. Higher education needs urgent restructuring. Massive open online courses can help students combine their acquisition effectiveness and ease of scalability.

The Ethics of Machine-Based Learning

Technological advances in the previous two decades have created an environment of innovation; however, there seems to be sometimes conflicting, emerging educational practices within communities of learners and educators. The central role of the instructor is being redefined by technology due to quickly-changing educational delivery modalities. By employing utilitarianism, relativism, and care ethics, the centrality of human agency in educational interaction is argued to be indispensable. Teaching and learning in massive open online courses, automated instruction, and learning analytics is altering the role of human instructors. This rapid modification of instructors' roles suggests that the ethical discourse of new educational technologies can be a frontier of critical thinking, especially as rubric-driven, automatic graders are refined and scaled.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ РЕАЛИЗАЦИИ ОТКРЫТЫХ ОНЛАЙН-КУРСОВ В ДОПОЛНИТЕЛЬНОМ ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОМ ОБРАЗОВАНИИ

The current paper features some aspects of online courses in higher professional and supplementary professional education. Online courses have recently become popular and are already considered as a sufficiently effective tool in specialist training. According to the analysis performed, the method, for all its attractiveness and novelty, has a number of significant shortcomings that make it difficult to use it in the Russian education, such as non-compliance with training standards, complexity of managed education, difficulties in monitoring the achievements of trainees and monitoring their effectiveness, high costs at the stage of implementation and development. There are several areas of activity that could at least partially solve the identified problems: methodically substantiated and gradual integration of existing training programs and online courses, systematic and consistent training of pedagogical staff and technical specialists capable of providing professional development of such content, creating joint online courses in various formats, implementation of network interaction of educational organizations, able to integrate existing resourses to solve these problems.

Massive open online courses in higher education: A data analysis of the MOOC supply

Purpose: The aim of this study is to analyze the factors influencing the MOOC supply level. Specifically, this paper analyzes certain internal and strategic factors associated with universities, such as prestige, public or private status, age, size (measured by the number of faculty members or students) and region. Design/methodology/approach: We apply a descriptive methodology and then use multivariate analysis to test five hypotheses related to the institutional profile of 151 universities in 29 countries. Empirical evidence is provided from universities offering MOOCs through the four of the most commonly used private global platforms that emerged as part of the booming MOOC movement (Udacity, Coursera, edX and MiriadaX). Findings: The findings show some differences when prestige is measured according to the Shanghai ranking (model 1) and the Webometrics ranking (model 2). In both cases, the private nature of the university and the region (North America) are factors that have a significant influence on the MOOC university supply. Depending on both rankings, size and age are influential factors. It is important to emphasize that prestige is a significant factor according to model 2. Research limitations/implications: MOOCs are a phenomenon with a growing trend, and for which the supply data change frequently. Therefore, the results of our empirical research are limited to a specific period. Practical implications: This paper provides new empirical evidence for use in future studies to analyze and compare the behavior of the MOOC supply by different universities. Social implications: This study contributes to the comprehension of the factors that influence the extent to which universities participate in the MOOC supply. It also suggests relevant aspects for innovation policies in university education, since universities must make strategic decisions in a competitive environment that affects their institutional philosophy. Originality/value: This paper makes an empirical contribution to the existing international literature on MOOC supply. It analyzes the relevance of the factor of prestige, as measured by two university rankings, Webometrics, the emphasis of which is focused on visibility on the Internet, and Shanghai, in which emphasis is placed on the impact on scientific research.