Now You See Me

Monday, 9 November 2015

Milena P. Staykova, EdD, APRN, FNP-BC
Department of Nursing, Jefferson College of Health Sciences, Roanoke, VA, USA

The online education is becoming a desirable form of education in the contemporary academic system. According to research published in 2013, 6.2 million students are taking online educational courses. Millennial generation is entering the higher education with advanced technology skills and social network connections. However, these students feel isolated if the faculty does not provide a constant feedback or reply to questions and emails instantaneously. The faculty are challenged to stay visible in the online environment without clear guidelines and expectations.  Furthermore, the online faculty members are overwhelmed but the time and efforts required to email students individually, answer multiple discussion forum threads, and grade a larger number of assignments. To address these issues, an online faculty checklist was developed for pre-during-and post-course expectations. Faculty members were mentored on how to use the checklist and create a presence in the online class. The purpose of this presentation is to share the mentoring strategies to new or seasoned faculty who have transitioned from teaching in a traditional face-to-face classroom to online coursework. The presenter will share challenges experienced by the director of an online RN-BSN program in mentoring online faculty members due to the distant physical environment, unique course composion, and diverse student population.