906 - Pandemic Pedagogy: Developing an Online Nursing Course on the Fly

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mortality, morbidity, and disruptions in every aspect of human affairs for more than a year now. Pandemic restrictions brought about school campus closures, which has caused major challenges in educational settings globally. In the United States, nurse-educators and administrators needed to make crucial decisions in March 2020 pertinent to the delivery of nursing programs amid the pandemic. Much of this deliberation required balancing the exigencies of clinical nursing courses, which are traditionally offered in-person, vis-à-vis public health mandates that protect the safety of students, faculty, and the public.

This session will offer practical strategies on how to develop a fully online clinical nursing course expeditiously. The practices that will be shared were based on the lived experience of faculty members who taught amid the pandemic in an associate-degree program in a large, diverse, and urban university setting.

The proponents will explore how COVID-19 has disrupted the delivery of nursing education. Three distinct aspects of pandemic pedagogy in nursing, as introspected by the proponents, will be discussed: (1) delivering effective didactics in a virtual classroom, (2) finding alternatives to in-person clinical/ skills lab experiences, and (3) ensuring that student assessments are valid, reliable, and just. Interactive discussions will include use of active learning strategies to ensure student engagement in an online environment. Participants will have a hands-on session on selected educational technologies that can be utilized to deliver online or hybrid nursing education. To conclude, the proponents will discuss why nursing programs must have contingency plans in place and must be ready to transition to fully online instruction at any given time moving forward.