Technologies, such as the use of information technology for teaching and learning, e-learning and virtual learning, are commonly used terms in today’s education system. These ever growing and developing modes of teaching and learning have changed the landscape of higher education, in general. As a result, nursing education has equally responded positively to the use of information technology for teaching and learning.
The aim of this study was to describe and compare the readiness to use information technology for teaching and learning for both nursing students and nurse educators in the two campuses of a North West public nursing college.
The study was conducted in a multi-campus North West public nursing college in South Africa.
A quantitative approach of a comparative descriptive design was followed in this study. Descriptive statistics was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 27.
A total of 285 (254 nursing students and 31 nurse educators) respondents completed the online questionnaires. Both nurse educators and nursing students were in agreement with the information technology use readiness construct (83.9% and 77.9%, respectively). For all the variables with significant (< 0.05)
When comparing the two campuses, conclusion can be drawn that the campus at NMDD is more ready to use information technology for teaching and learning than the campus at Dr Kenneth Kauda District.
The results of this study contribute to the body of knowledge on technology use for teaching and learning in nursing education.
Terminologies, such as the use of information technology for teaching and learning, digital, online learning, e-learning and virtual learning, are commonly used in today’s education system. By definition, the use of information technology for teaching and learning can be described as the use of computer-based educational tools and/or systems to conduct the process of teaching and learning (Elbasuony, Gangadharan & Gaber
In an African context, there has been a noticeable increase in technology use and willingness to incorporate its use in almost all sectors of life in countries like Rwanda, with more emphasis placed on the education sector (Harerimana & Mtshali
Despite the above notion, it is inevitable that information technology use is the future of nursing education in order to satisfy the critical cross field outcomes such as lifelong and continuous learning (Pete, Coopasami & Knight
The authors have further observed a dearth of literature on studies related to the phenomenon ‘technology use for teaching and learning at the public nursing colleges in South Africa’. This is despite the fact that public nursing colleges in South Africa produce between 73% and 80% of professional nurses annually (Geyer
To describe the readiness in information technology usage for teaching and learning by nursing students and nurse educators in the two campuses of a North West public nursing college
To compare the readiness in information technology usage for teaching and learning by nursing students and nurse educators in the two campuses of a North West public nursing college.
A quantitative approach of a comparative descriptive design was followed in this study. A quantitative comparative descriptive design is described as a logic of comparison wherein the researcher compares two or more situations or cases which are meaningfully contrasting (Bryman & Bell
The study was conducted in the North West province in South Africa. Respondents in the study included the nursing students and nurse educators from a North West Province Multi-campus nursing college. The college consists of two campuses, which are situated in the two districts out of the four districts of the province, namely Dr Kenneth Kaunda District (Dr KKD) and Ngaka Modiri Molema District (NMMD). The two campuses vary with the districts they cater for in terms of student admissions. Dr KKD/Klerksdorp campus predominantly caters for Dr KKD and Bojanala districts, whereas NMMD/Mahikeng campus primarily caters for NMMD and Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati Districts. Notably, the Klerksdorp campus is found in a semi-urban area, whilst the Mahikeng campus is in a predominantly rural area, thus leading to disparities concerning structural development and resource allocation. The college offers both pre- and post-registration nursing programmes, which include diploma in nursing and a range of post-graduate diplomas.
The study consisted of two sets of population, namely nurse educators and pre-South African Nursing Council (SANC) registration nursing students (level 1–4) enrolled for the academic year 2021 at North West Province Multi-campus nursing college pursuing SANC-R425 or SANC-R171 qualifications. Multi-level stratified random sampling technique was used in this study, given the geographical factors and the fact that data sets did not have common traits (Brink, Van der Walt & Van Rensburg
Population for both nurse educators and nursing students per campus.
Population | |
---|---|
First-year level | 50 |
Second-year level | 76 |
Third-year level | 150 |
Fourth-year level | 58 |
Nurse educators | 20 |
First-year level | 50 |
Second-year level | 56 |
Third-year level | 95 |
Fourth-year level | 62 |
Nurse-educators | 20 |
Sample size for nursing students.
Level of study | Population | Proportion ( |
Sample |
---|---|---|---|
First year | 50 | 50/334 = 0.150 | 0.150 × 131 = 20 |
Second year | 76 | 76/334 = 0.228 | 0.228 × 131 = 30 |
Third year | 150 | 150/334 = 0.449 | 0.449 × 131 = 59 |
Fourth year | 58 | 58/334 = 0.174 | 0.174 × 131 = 23 |
334 | 1.000 | 131 | |
First year | 50 | 50/263 = 0.190 | 0.190 × 103 = 20 |
Second year | 56 | 56/263 = 0.213 | 0.213 × 103 = 22 |
Third year | 95 | 95/263 = 0.361 | 0.361 × 103 = 37 |
Fourth year | 62 | 62/263 = 0.236 | 0.236 × 103 = 24 |
263 | 1.000 | 103 |
KKD, Kenneth Kaunda District; NMMD, Ngaka Modiri Molema District.
With regard to the nurse educators, the authors used a total sampling technique, where all nurse educators were included in the study because of their small number (
Nurse educators (
Inclusion criteria and justification.
Inclusion criteria | Justification |
---|---|
Registered with SANC as a nurse educator. |
Nurse educators are directly involved in teaching and learning |
Enrolled for 2021 academic year. |
To ensure that information received is current |
SANC, South African Nursing Council.
To obtain a sample size, the Raosoft sample size calculator was used. An acceptable margin error was set at 5%, with a confidence level of 95% and response distribution at 50%. The sample size (
The selection of students was carried out through a fishbowl technique to obtain the sample at each study level as shown in the above table.
A self-administered questionnaire by Mohammed (
The internal consistency specifically to this study was then measured using the Cronbach alpha value within the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 27. The amendments of the tool were then made according to the similarity index obtained from the Cronbach alpha report. The authors then considered the value obtained as the Cronbach alpha in this study.
Following the word of mouth recruitment process, the authors requested a permission from the gatekeepers to place the recruitment pamphlet on the notice boards at each campus during block sessions in accordance with their institutional communication policies. The recruitment pamphlet had contact details of authors and independent research assistant, for potential participants to contact the authors and share their preferred method of receiving the link to the questionnaire should they be interested to participate. The questionnaire was then shared with participants who contacted the authors through either WhatsApp or e-mail depending on their preference. The questionnaire comprised six sections, including (1) the informed consent, (2) socio-demographic characteristics, (3) attitude towards the use of technology in teaching and learning, (4) content and culture readiness, (5) technology-use readiness and (6) participation declined.
Respondents were provided up to 14 days to familiarise with the questionnaire, which implied that responses were only obtained after 14 days from the date of sharing the link. That is, no response was received within the initial 14 days as participants were reading through the informed consent, which was in the first section of the questionnaire. Feedback was received from participants electronically through Google docs, which was linked to the authors’ institutional Google drive wherein its password is only known to them, thus ensuring safe data management. Only the authors and statisticians had access to the data.
The key issue involved in data collection was the presence of COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted human interaction and affected the return rate of the questionnaires. In addition, lack of technology skills and devices were key issues as some participants found it either difficult to fill in an online questionnaire or did not fill it in at all. Some questions were returned empty or incomplete because of the aforementioned key issues.
Descriptive statistics were analysed using the SPSS V27 software. Incomplete questionnaires were not analysed. A descriptive statistical test was used to determine the level of readiness in information technology use by nursing students and nurse educators in the two campuses of a North West public nursing college. Furthermore, the authors ran the Mann-Whitney
This study adapted a data collection tool that was developed by Mohammed (
An ethical approval (NWU-02071-20-A1) was obtained from both North-West University Health Research Ethics Committee (NWU-HREC) and Provincial Department of Health research, monitoring and evaluation directorate. Subsequent to attaining approval, permission was further sought from individual campus heads who were the gatekeepers at the campuses. Participation of both sets of respondents was voluntary, and the respondents were allowed to withdraw should the need arise. Confidentiality and privacy of information were ensured according to the NWU institutional policy, and are kept for the next five years.
The study used a questionnaire as a data collection tool. According to Brink et al. (
Electronic informed consent was obtained voluntarily from the participants without coercion, undue influence or inappropriate incentives. The detailed electronic informed consent was attached to the questionnaire as the initial section and had the ‘do you want to participate in the study’ question. The answer to that question, either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ determined participation to the study. A link to the informed consent that was part of the questionnaire was shared either through WhatsApp or email depending on participants’ preference. In order to ensure an informed consent, potential participants were allowed a maximum of 14 days to peruse through the electronic consent form prior to accepting or declining it.
The authors adapted a self-administered questionnaire in this study which was used in a case study in the University of Fallujah to assess e-learning readiness by Mohammed (
The results are summarised according to the aforementioned socio-demographic and construct descriptions. That is, the authors described the results according to the constructs as the constructs formed sections of the questionnaire that was shared with the participants. Each of the three main constructs in this section was divided into two sub-constructs. The authors firstly describe the summary of the two sub-constructs for each construct for nurse educators followed by the results of nursing students.
A total of 285 (254 nursing students and 31 nurse educators) respondents completed the questionnaires. For both sets of population, the majority were female respondents (
In this section, the authors describe the results by describing the results from the sub-constructs for the two independent populations in this study. The description of the results is separated according to the populations and further presented in pie charts.
Attitude towards the use of technology in teaching and learning by nurse educators was assessed by the two sub-constructs, namely (1) attitude towards technology use and (2) technology use readiness. The results are presented below in the clustered bar graph (
Nurse educators’ attitude towards the use of technology in teaching and learning.
Similar results were also observed for nurse educators’ ‘technology use readiness’ sub-construct (
Nurse educators’ technology use readiness.
The majority (57.4%) of nursing students were in agreement with the sub-construct that described their ‘attitude towards the use of technology in teaching and learning’, whereas a minority (6.1%) of them were in disagreement, see
Nursing students’ attitude towards the use of technology in teaching and learning.
The nursing students’ results (77.9%) further showed a general agreement (agree to strongly agree) to information technology use readiness sub-construct, while those in disagreement were a minority (4.8%). The results of this sub-construct are summarised in
Nursing students’ technology use readiness.
The results of this study revealed that the majority (45.1%) of nurse educators are in disagreement with the content readiness regarding the use of information technology for teaching and learning sub-construct (
Nurse educators’ content readiness.
The different results were observed for culture readiness sub-construct as depicted in
Nurse educators’ culture readiness.
More than half (50.4%) of the nursing students were in disagreement (disagree to strongly disagree) with the content readiness regarding information technology use for teaching and learning sub-construct. Only a few (13.4%) respondents were in disagreement (agree to strongly agree), see
Nursing students’ content readiness.
Different results were observed with regard to culture readiness to use information technology for teaching and learning sub-construct (
Nursing students’ culture readiness
This construct aimed at assessing information technology use readiness of nurse educators by assessing their access to resources and technical skills (
Nurse educators’ access to resources.
Nurse educators’ technical skills.
The nurse educators’ results on the sub-construct ‘technical skills’ showed that the majority (64.5%) of respondents were in agreement (agree to strongly agree) with the sub-construct that described the technical skills they possessed to enable them to use information technology for teaching and learning. A minority (3.2%) of respondents were in disagreement (disagree to strongly disagree) with the items in this sub-construct.
The results of this study revealed that without considering the neutral option, the majority (48.8%) of nursing students were in disagreement (disagree to strongly agree) with the sub-construct ‘access to resources’ needed to use information technology for teaching and learning. A minority (13.8%) of respondents were in agreement (agree to strongly agree) with the sub-construct of nursing students access to resources (see
Nursing students’ access to resources.
The difference was observed with the sub-construct that described the nursing students’ technical skills (
Nursing students’ technical skills.
The authors did not run the comparative statistics for nurse educators because of their small sample size. As a result, there was no report on the comparison of readiness in information technology usage for teaching and learning for nurse educators. The authors acknowledge that the aforementioned was a limitation to the study. Comparative statistics for nursing students on both campuses were run on the following variables: (1) attitude towards information technology usage in teaching and learning, (2) attitude towards information technology usage readiness, (3) content readiness, (4) culture readiness, (5) access to resources and (6) technical skills.
The results of this study revealed that the students’ attitude towards information technology usage in teaching and learning, attitude towards the use of information technology readiness, culture readiness, access to resources and technical skills differ significantly across campuses because the
Comparative statistics for campuses.
Variables | Test statistics |
|
---|---|---|
Mann-Whitney |
||
Attitude towards the use of information technology in teaching and learning | 90.000 | 0.205 |
Attitude towards the use of information technology readiness | 99.500 | 0.311 |
Content readiness | 105.000 | 0.511 |
Culture readiness | 96.000 | 0.297 |
Access to resources | 107.500 | 0.602 |
Technical skills | 95.500 | 0.279 |
Grouping variable: Campus.
The aim of this study was to describe and compare the readiness in information technology usage for teaching and learning for both nursing students and nurse educators in the two campuses of a North West public nursing college. The discussion of the results will be according to the set of objectives.
The results of this study revealed that both educators and students are not yet ready to use information technology for teaching and learning. Nurse educators reported not being content ready and not having access to resources that can enable them to use information technology for teaching and learning. Content readiness and access to resources are key prerequisites for the use of information technology for teaching and learning. Lack thereof can be regarded as hindrances for optimum use of information technology for teaching and learning. Similar results were reported by Harerimana et al. (
A similar trend was observed with nursing students in this study. Nursing students showed a positive attitude regarding the use of information technology for teaching and learning. This implies that nursing students are psychologically ready to adopt information technology in teaching and learning. Despite the psychological readiness, there is still a challenge with regard to content readiness. There was a disagreement in the construct of content readiness which inferred that nursing students are not content ready to adopt information technology as a teaching and learning strategy. Equally important was the finding that showed that access to resources still remains a hindrance for the use of information technology for teaching and learning. These findings are supported by a study conducted by Nsouli and Vlachopoulos (
The authors used the Mann-Whitney
Ranks per campus.
Variables | Campus | Mean rank | Sum of ranks | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Attitude towards information technology usage in teaching and learning | Dr KKD Campus | 103 | 112.17 | 11554.00 |
NMMD Campus | 141 | 130.04 | 18336.00 | |
Total | 244 | - | - | |
Attitude towards the use of information technology readiness | Dr KKD Campus | 104 | 110.16 | 11457.00 |
NMMD Campus | 141 | 132.47 | 18678.00 | |
Total | 245 | - | - | |
Content readiness | Dr KKD Campus | 103 | 117.37 | 12089.00 |
NMMD Campus | 141 | 126.25 | 17801.00 | |
Total | 244 | - | - | |
Culture readiness | Dr KKD Campus | 103 | 111.70 | 11505.00 |
NMMD Campus | 140 | 129.58 | 18141.00 | |
Total | 243 | - | - | |
Access to resources | Dr KKD Campus | 104 | 134.46 | 13983.50 |
NMMD Campus | 140 | 113.62 | 15906.50 | |
Total | 244 | - | - | |
Technical skills | Dr KKD Campus | 104 | 107.43 | 11173.00 |
NMMD Campus | 140 | 133.69 | 18717.00 | |
Total | 244 | - | - |
KKD, Kenneth Kaunda District; NMMD, Ngaka Modiri Molema District.
The results of this study show that there are gaps as far as readiness in information technology usage for teaching and learning is concerned at the selected public nursing college’s two campuses. Although many respondents (71% and 57.4% for nurse educators and nursing students, respectively) reported a positive attitude to adopt information technology for teaching and learning, much still needs to be done in terms of skill and resource empowerment. As a result, it can be concluded that the North West public college campuses are not ready to use information technology for teaching and learning. However, when comparing the two campuses, conclusion can be drawn that the campus at NMDD, apart from the aforementioned hindrances, is more ready to use technology for teaching and learning than the campus at Dr KKD.
The authors recommend further research on information technology usage for teaching and learning at public nursing colleges. Furthermore, the authors recommend that further research on attitudes of male nursing students towards the nursing profession needs to be conducted because of their low turnover in this study as it became apparent in the demographics, wherein the majority (
The authors would like to acknowledge all the nursing students and nurse educators for their support and agreeing to participate in this study. The authors would also like to acknowledge the statistician who assisted with statistical analysis of data.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.
G.G, I.O. and M.A. contributed equally from conceptualisation until the completion of the final manuscript.
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
The data supporting the findings in this study are available from the corresponding author and can only be requested upon a valid and reasonable request.
The views and opinions expressed and submitted in this article are those of the authors and they do not intend to communicate the official position of the institution of affiliation of the authors regarding the phenomenon discussed in this article.