Abstract

Little is known about the effect of evidence-based strategies to increase engagement in online nursing students. A key problem with online education is promoting student motivation toward actively learning course content. Reduced engagement produces excess stress, feelings of disinterest, an increased perception of distance, and reduced student retention. This study explored some of these issues by identifying factors that engage students within the context of the inevitable differences in opinion between online nursing students and course faculty. Included are three relevant manuscripts. The first is a concept analysis comparing and contrasting engagement and persistence. The second manuscript includes the first two exploratory rounds of a Delphi study where an expert panel of online students and faculty (n = 24) reached a consensus identifying 36 strategies believed to increase online nursing student engagement. The final manuscript reports the findings of the third round of the Delphi study using a larger general sample (n = 201) of online nursing students and faculty. Results yielded 11 significant factors for increasing online nursing student engagement, along with showing significant differences between student and faculty opinions. These factors account for 66.54% of variance in engagement scores within the sample.

Date of publication

Spring 5-1-2015

Document Type

Dissertation (Local Only Access)

Language

english

Persistent identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10950/291

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