Online Course Development Success: The Samoan Experience

Gangeness, Jeanine E.

Sunday, 30 October 2011: 2:45 PM

Jeanine E. Gangeness, PhD, RN
Department of Nursing, Bemidji State University, Bemidji, MN

Learning Objective 1: The learner will be able to identify 3 technology challenges that nurse educators in Western Samoa face with online education.

Learning Objective 2: The learner will be able to identify how cultural and socio-economic issues impact the development and implementation of an online course?

Background: Registered Nurses in Western Samoa have no access to continuing education once they have completed their initial university education and are employed in the villages of Western Samoa. The Pacific Open Learning Health Net (POLHN), sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO), provides eLearning opportunities to healthcare professionals throughout the Pacific region. A university collaborative responded to the request for programming with Qualifications for Online Learning a course delivered to Samoan nurses in both a face-to-face and online format.

Methods: Development of online courses from face-to-face courses, use of conversion tools supporting excellence in online education, and viewing courses from a learners point of view are all topics key to online course development success. The transitional worksheets used to develop and transform courses will be provided to the presentation attendees.

Results: The Samoan’s found the educational experience to be helpful in developing their own online courses using Moodle. Students were to develop an online course as the course outcome. Overall, participants judged the workshop to be a worthwhile experience as noted by their rating of the course as "Excellent" (82%) or “Good” (23%). Overall, participants realized that although the workshop was challenging, the types of skills they were learning are valuable, especially in an increasingly technical society. The participants appreciated an opportunity to broaden their knowledge.

Conclusions: Development of online courses is possible even in a country with limited technology resources. This presentation will provide an overview of the two workshops (face-to-face) and online components of the Qualifications for Online Learning course. Additionally, a discussion on how cultural and socio-economic issues impacts the development and implementation of an online course.

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