1. Face-to-face to Online:
A continuing journey of discovery and learning
Dr Andrea M. Corbett
Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki
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a.corbett@witt.ac.nz
Background
At this conference in Palmerston North last year I described the Institute I worked at, The Western
Institute of Technology at Taranaki in New Plymouth as a government owned tertiary education
institution in a largely rural province of New Zealand. We have a School of Nursing providing the
three year Bachelor of Nursing degree with an intake of just over 50 students per year. All
teaching until 2009 was by classroom face-to-face lectures and tutorials. This presentation I gave
last year examined the experiences of staff and students when the decision was made to deliver
the 2009 Nursing Research Course, formerly a face-to-face classroom based course, to a fully
online mode of delivery.

2. The decision to move the course online came from the Institute’s aim to increase the flexible
delivery mode of courses that was becoming part of course delivery through all schools,
departments and faculties of the Institute. A development group comprising three persons was
formed to facilitate and support the development of the course. In a mere five months the Course
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was ready to be delivered.
It was believed that using the existing Nursing Research core course text (Polit and Beck, 2006)
and associated materials from the former face-to-face delivery would make the transition to
online delivery relatively simple. I related last year how this was not so. The course content was
divided into a series of eight topics that progressively built upon one another. Each topic ran over
two weeks and had a series of learning resources cited from the text and in addition had a number
of web-linked resources that supported the particular subject learning.

3. Each topic had a series of Tasks and formative assessment learning activities for the student to
undertake at their own pace. The formative assessment activities, but not the results of the tasks,
were submitted to the tutor for grading, marking, commenting upon and returned to the student.
There were a total of thirty five of these in all. Yes I know that was far too many, however it was
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typical of the mistakes that were made in taking a face-to-face course and thinking it could be
recrafted slightly and put online. The course was concluded with two summative assessments: the
first was the critique of a journal article and the second the writing of a research proposal.
It was felt important to evaluate the transition from the face-to-face mode of delivery to the
Online mode and a comparative analytical study was undertaken to effect this. There were a
number of assumptions that had been made about moving the course to fully online delivery and
these needed to be examined, tested and changes made for the 2010 and subsequent deliveries.

4. Last year in Palmerston North I reported on the initial evaluation of course results by delivery
format between the 2008 face-to-face and the 2009 online delivery. There was a commonality
with both forms of delivery that the students had no knowledge of the nursing research process
before commencing the course. Of significance, which escaped us at the time, 84% of the students
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in the first online delivery had no previous experience with online learning either. This highlighted
the situation of student access to computers and the internet from home. This important issue
was highlighted at an NZQA and Nursing Council recent audit held at the institute. We are going
to implement a low cost buy option for those students without modern computer technology at
home. It would take a benevolent sponsor I fear to deal with the lack of broadband telephone
connection issues.
There were a number of significant findings from an evaluation study undertaken with the
students in 2009:

5. • Even upon completition of the course the online students felt that face-to-face delivery
was best or useful and rated a high to moderate satisfaction rating based upon their
optional tutorial sessions
• The lecturer was considered good, passionate or knowledgeable on the subject
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• Many found the course content boring, difficult, or its relevance to practice unclear
• Students stated that they felt they were unprepared for the course and had received poor
guidance.
In considering the comments of the students to the questionnaire survey the following
recommendations were made for the 2010 delivery:
1. Hold a compulsory computer suite introduction to the course to familiarise students
with the online platform, the course layout and introduction to their groups.

6. 2. Have a dedicated session in group tutorial operation and leadership to include issues
such as group members having an agreed time in which they would all be online
together.
3. A reduction in Topic content of formative assessments and an equivalent time span for
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completition.
4. A clear expectation of start time and close-off period for each Topic
5. Consider the appointment of an external partner to assess formative activities
6. Undertake a review of the two summative assessments.
So what happened and where did we go?
The first recommendation re a dedicated computer lab session with attendance made compulsory
was a huge success such that it became an automatic inclusion or the beginning of the this year’s
course. The advantage of this session was that with a dedicated elearning tutor students were
guided through the Moodle platform, what the course looked like and how to access materials,

7. download and readings, and then to submit their assignments. The “lack of preparedness” was
never mentioned again.
It was horrifying to professional nurse tutors who work in the modern evidence based practice
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environment to have students state that they did not see the relevance of the subject of nursing
research to their practice. Taking these comments on board in the first tutorial session a
particular emphasis was placed on the relevance and importance of research to modern nursing
practice, the knowledge of which supported evidence based practice. Using examples from
practice, both of the tutor and from the students clinical experiences, helped all those “doubting
Thomas’s to see the relevance of a knowledge of nursing research to clinical practice today, no
matter what the setting they were working in.

8. The feedback of boring was partially relieved by the session on the relevance to nursing practice
but a careful examination of how the course had been put together and subsequently delivered
was made and considerable changes made after an analysis of this.
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We asked ourselves what was the purpose of the formative assessments? The answer was to
assess the self directed learning the students had been undertaking. With 35 assessments in total
we quickly came to see that many made the decision not to complete some of these due to the
time involved. We asked ourselves: “In this topic what learning do I really want the student to
possess?”
As a consequence the number of formative assessments was cut to 10. We assessed the Topic
content and by a process of deduction decided on what was the key learning students should be
able to articulate from their readings, activities and tasks. This has worked with an 88% return
rate (37 out of 42) on the assessments through the first nine of 10 formative assessments.

9. Each week the students have an option of a morning or late afternoon one hour tutorial session.
In this session the first 20 minutes or thereabouts are spent reviewing the material that was
prescribed for learning the previous week, and answering any questions the students may have.
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Following this there are some tutor led exercises and discussions around the topic. The tutor
ensures that the material is current and in line with what should have been covered in readings
the past week.
What this means in practice is that students stay on track with the learnings required. If they lag
behind they are able to clarify deficits in understanding; if they have gone ahead they are pulled
back with astute questioning that shows perhaps only lip service has been made to the knowledge
expected to be gained from the readings in the Topic and they realise that they can only cheat
themselves by racing ahead.

10. An analysis of the rationale behind the two summative assessments was held with comment
sought from other tutors and academics familiar with the subject. The value of the Journal Article
Critique, the subject of the first summative assessment, was seen as being a support of the
importance of nurses working in an evidence based practice environment so having the skills to
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evaluate the evidence presented to them. There has been a total enthusiasm from the previous
two cohorts of third year students who have had to conduct a literature review on a special topic
of interest to them. They state quite unequivocally that without this preparation received during
the nursing research course they would have great difficulty in undertaking such an essential task
in validating nursing clinical practice.
There is still expressed desire from some students for an exam as the final summative assessment
in the course. Personally I disagree with this as I believe it is too easy to learn by rote and answer
an exam. We have the students prepare a Research Proposal on a subject that interests them.

11. By writing a research proposal they need to demonstrate in actuality that they understand the
differences between a research problem, a research statement and a research question;
considerations to be made in selecting a sample from a population and the best method to go
about collecting the data from participants. They need to demonstrate an understanding of
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research methodologies and why this particular methodology has been chosen for this study.
They need to discuss analysis of results and dissemination of findings. I venture to say that all
these aspects that make up a research proposal worthy of consideration cannot be answered in a
mere exam.
I think the main lesson we have learned though is that nothing stays the same and we must always
be ready to change with the environment and with the cohorts of students we have.
Using some of the recent literature I would like to share with you some of our thoughts and invite
your participation:

12. 1) A competent academic and classroom face-to-face tutor is unlikely to have the skills
to develop an online course for themselves: Lowenthal and White state that whilst
this idea is rooted in the traditional history of course development very few people are
in fact qualified to develop courses and be the subject matter expert. Online education
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is a complex process and requires a different pedagogy to face-to-face teaching and
requires technological expertise.
2) Patti Shank (2005) reckoned there are some basic mistakes made in designing
assessments for online learning and I think we did everyone of these – why do we keep
trying to reinvent the wheel eh?
The first mistake she talks of is expecting a bell curve. She believes that a bell curve is
the result of expected outcomes from most instruction yet it is the model that might be

13. expected with no instruction. A mastery model instead assumes that most students
will achieve the desired outcomes and therefore have higher grades.
Shank goes on to talk of having the wrong type of assessments in our online courses –
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usually as a result of our years of teaching face-to-face. She speaks of the difference in
knowing about and knowing how in types of assessment. Students can learn facts and
a declarative assessment will discover whether they have learned that (such as an
exam) or procedural where students have to formulate, determine and so on to
demonstrate their knowledge. She cautions that many tertiary education tutors do not
infuse their courses with real world implications and skills. We learned this lesson
when applying the concepts of research to support evidence based practice and used
the example of moist wound healing.

14. The final thing I took from reading Shank’s work was to ensure that my assessments
were valid in that they matched the objectives with the appropriate reading level. Our
course is level 6 and when carefully examined the knowledge expected of students
many of the formative assessments in 2009 had been at level 7 or higher. Is it any
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wonder we had non completions or poor completitions.
Our practice is to review and grade all submissions within 24 hours of the student
submitting same. A number of our readings and discussions with experienced online
course facilitators emphasised that direct feedback to the student stating whether they
were on track, had missed a point and so on, was of great value to the student and
helped to keep them engaged in the learning. Rob Kelly the editor of Online Classroom
published a collection of articles on student collaboration and in this the very strong
point was made that students needed to interact with each other and with the content.
In fact he states that “need to touch the content every day.” “They need to know how

15. they are doing and they want to know quickly.” “He made the interesting comment
that I could not help but agree with and that was “that student wants to know that the
faculty member cares about the student.”
We decided on a review of the progress of learning in the course not to go with a 15
formal group structure. This was occasioned by the simple fact that it was a very
difficult thing to get groups of students agreeing on a time when they all could be
online together. Asynchronous learning proved to be just impossible. Perhaps this
difficulty was added to by the fact that many of the student cohort were
simultaneously undertaking a mental health praxis placement. This made the attempt
to develop online discussion an extremely difficult task as many of the students were
on placement and not available. Working both ams and pms I gave the attempts away.

16. We strongly suggested that they form small study groups to help with the learning and
to jointly undertake the activities and tasks in the topics.
Most of the students were convinced that collaboration with their peers would be of
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benefit to them and many did form loose study groups of twos and threes or four. In
our introductory compulsory computer lab session to commence the course we had
spoken of the benefit of group collaboration and gave them tips on how to interact
together, to problem solve, to criticise, assume responsibilities and organise and
manage their time. We saw that a community of practice had developed among the
students and we were mere spectators, supporting spectators, on the side. There were
few who chose not to actively engage and the engagement of some students was
indeed on a must know or need to know basis – “what does this mean”, “do I need to
know it”, “I’ll ask Mary.”

17. Best practice was emphasised to the students of setting time aside regularly each week
to engage with each other and with the learning. How much time they should spend
on the material in each Topic was also stated and within 30 minutes the materials and
study time required for each topic was the same. This practice for us could not be over
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emphasised as it created an awareness of “must dos”, the expectations of the learning
we expected them to achieve, and reduced uncertainty.
One other thing we insisted upon was that all communication with the tutor support
staff was through the Moodle portal. No content based enquiries through general email
were responded to in any other manner than redirecting the enquiry to the Moodle
platform.

18. And this led us to the, what is for me, is the curly question of social media sites and
networking – the world of blogs, wikis, twitter and facebook.
What is your experience? I have resisted the introduction and use of these to date
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however accept that like the dinosaur my attitude is fast becoming extinct and I need
to see the benefits of these technological advances that are second nature to so many
of my students.
I would be interested in your experiences.