Iranian Nursing Students Experiences Regarding the Status of E-Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic Publisher Pubmed



Salmani N¹ ; Bagheri I² ; Dadgari A¹ Show Affiliations
Source: PLoS ONE Published:2022

Abstract

Introduction With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities immediately responded to protect students' lives by implementing e-learning in order to stop the spread of the communicable disease within the academic population. This study aimed to describe iranian nursing students' experiences of e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and methods The current study used a qualitative descriptive study. Ten nursing undergraduate students from a single Iranian university identified using purposive sampling methods. Face-to-face semi-structured interview conducted from May to July 2021 and analyzed through thematic analysis. Lincoln and Goba criteria were used to obtain data validity and reliability. Results Four themes emerged includingnovelty of e-learning,advantages of e-learning, disadvantages of e-learningandpassage of time and the desire to return to face education. Participants evaluated e-learning as a novel method without proper infrastructure, it was initially confusing but became the new normal as their knowledge of the way to use it improved. Advantages included self-centered flexible learning and reduction in their concerns experienced with face-to-face learning. Disadvantages including changing the way they interact with teachers, decreasing interactions with classmates, problems with education files, superficial learning, hardware problems, family members' perceptions of the student role, interference of home affairs with e-learning, cheating on exams and assignments and being far away from the clinical context. Conclusion The findings revealed that e-learning has been introduced as a new method for the current research participants and despite the perceived benefits, these students believed that elearning could supplement face education but not replace it. © 2022 Salmani et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.