Courtesy of roveracademy.com

While UR maintains its commitment to the residential college feel at least on the undergraduate level, URs School of Nursing has embraced the trend of online education and plans to expand online offerings in a model that UR President Joel Seligman praised in his Annual Report to the University community given to the UR Faculty Senate last week.

Our School of Nursing has been the leader at our University in developing a significant online curriculum, he said in the address on Tuesday, Sept. 11.

The School of Nursing has been offering online learning for about a decade, beginning with elective courses such as physiology and anatomy basic courses needed to start a nursing degree. The school currently offers five of these prerequisite courses for a Bachelor of Science degree solely online.

About a year after they started offering these classes, the school began building what are now called hybrid online degree programs and now offers two: the Family Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner program and the Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science completion program. The school also offers 44 other hybrid online courses with required in-class and online components. It plans to launch two new hybrid online programs by 2015: a Leadership in Health Care Systems program and a Doctor of Nursing Practice program.

Dean of the School of Nursing Kathy Rideout said that while the prerequisite courses have minimal interaction with faculty and are entirely self-directed, the hybrid online programs are restricted to a small number of students to maintain a high quality of education.

Faculty and student interaction is critical, Rideout said, adding that it is also vital to maintain the same rigor in the course when it is taught online, while catering to the need for convenience.

Despite the success of the School of Nursings programs 41 percent of the curriculum is currently offered online and online education provides 26 percent of the School of Nursing tuition revenue it remains unclear if this model can and will be extrapolated to other schools within the University or if this success might uniquely pertain to the School of Nursing.

It reflects more our profession of nursing more than our University, Rideout said.

Before launching the online curriculum, the School of Nursing solicited student feedback and ascertained that students wanted the online curriculum because most work full-time.

Continue reading here:
Seligman weighs state, future of online learning