The Experiences of Nursing Students towards Distance Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Authors : İlknur ÖZKAN, Secil TAYLAN, Emine İLASLAN

Pages : 106-117

Doi:10.31458/iejes.942443

View : 17 | Download : 8

Publication Date : 2021-10-01

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :With the emergency crisis management due to the COVID-19, in many countries around the world, the education system structured according to formal education has been tailored to the distance education system This study was carried out to comprehensively investigate and understand the experiences of nursing students towards web-based education in Turkey, which is applying distance education today due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study was conducted as a qualitative study with a Hermeneutic phenomenological framework. Data collection was terminated when data saturation was reached. The sample of the study consisted of 14 student nurses. The data were evaluated using Van Manen`s thematic analysis method. The analysis of the data revealed three themes: `COVID-19 and the distance education that comes with it`, `barriers to distance education`, and `dilemmas regarding distance education in terms of nursing education`. In the study, nursing students perceived personal, infrastructural, technical equipment, and pedagogical barriers to distance education. Although students were aware of some of the opportunities offered by distance education, they defined the lack of clinical practice as an important deficiency and inadequacy in terms of nursing education and stated that they were worried about this issue. In terms of the successful applicability of distance education in nursing education, it is important to be aware of the barriers and to try to reduce them, and to increase strategies that will strengthen clinical learning as an alternative to clinical education, which is an integral part of nursing education.
Keywords : COVID 19, nursing students, distance education, student experiences