The impact of distance education on nursing students course performance in a sino-foreign cooperative program during the onset of COVID-19: a quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Abstract Background The outbreak of COVID-19 changed many studies’ teaching mode in higher education profoundly, including nursing. This study evaluated the impact of distance education on the course performance of nursing students in a nursing fundamentals course during the epidemic of COVID-19. Methods This is a comparative prospective and retrospective quasi-experimental study. Nursing students in a Sino-foreign cooperative program were allocated to either an intervention group (distance education, n = 48) or control group (face-to-face teaching, n = 36). A self-efficacy questionnaire, an academic engagement scale and grades of the final written examination were used to evaluate the students’ self-efficacy, academic engagement and academic performance, respectively. The data in this study were analyzed by two independent sample t-tests and the Chi-square test. Students experiencing distance teaching had worse academic performance (p = 0.001) and lower levels of learning behavior self-efficacy (p<0.05). The total score of academic engagement (p = 0.04) for students experiencing distance teaching were significantly lower than the scores of those students in the control group. Conclusions In the context of COVID-19, nursing students conducted using distance education had poor course performance.

Keywords

• Distance education
• COVID-19
• Fundamentals of nursing
• Academic self-efficacy
• Academic engagement