The Virtual Nursing Symposium: A Transforming Undergraduate Nursing Student Conference

Undergraduate research conferences are common events in higher education that allow students to present their research and evidence-based projects.  However, this is impractical for nursing learners in an online program to be able to attend.  Some learners live a long distance from the campus location for the undergraduate research conference.  Students may also have an established career with working hours, or family obligations so attending would be a hardship. 

The Virtual Nursing Symposium, a two-day online nursing conference is a solution for RNs who are completing their BS in nursing in an online learning program.  The location of the Virtual Nursing Symposium is the online Learning Management System.  The learning platform is a convenient, easy to use approach for online nursing students to be able to attend and/or present at an undergraduate conference.  The poster presentation includes the vision, and planning, including the call for abstracts, abstract reviews, web site development, implementation, and evaluation of the Virtual Nursing Symposium. 

Dissemination of information is an important aspect of advancing the discipline of nursing.  Based on this strong belief, nursing faculty in the RN to BS in nursing completion program mentored learners about the dissemination of information in courses and specific to the Virtual Nursing Symposium.  Faculty coached learners on how to write an abstract, how to use the online abstract submission program (created by the authors for Symposium abstract submissions), and how to author creative and interesting electronic posters and PowerPoint presentations. 

Learners submitted the abstracts of their evidence-based projects for review by the Planning Committee.  Learners received notice of submission results and specific instructions for when to post their electronic posters and PowerPoint presentations in the Virtual Nursing Symposium that was set up in the online Learning Management System.  Twenty-seven online nursing learners presented their electronic posters or PowerPoint presentations via the Learning Management System at the first Virtual Nursing Symposium.  Symposium brochures with the presenter’s names, credentials, presentation titles, and presentation abstracts and were distributed at the entrance to the Virtual Nursing Symposium forum by way of an electronic PDF file.  Invitees include all faculty and students in the RN to BS program.  Each presenter started a new discussion thread in the Virtual Nursing Symposium where their presentation was posted, along with their abstract.  Each presenter visited their presentation thread frequently during the two-day period to answer any questions and dialogue with attendees.  Attendee evaluation of the Virtual Nursing Symposium is quite favorable.  This poster includes color images of the Virtual Nursing Symposium, along with informational narratives.