Online Education – Advantages and Disadvantages for the Nurse and Midwife Programs

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the relevant anti-epidemic measures led to suspending all forms of onsite learning at higher education institutions in March 2020. The educational process was reorganized and transformed into online education. The organization and realization of this form of education are related to innovative approaches and suitable educational resources.
The process of training for the regulated Nurse and Midwife programs has specific characteristics. The students need to gain theoretical knowledge and master medical manipulations to the level of automatism before being applied to a real patient.
The results of the surveyed opinion of the students from the Nurse and Midwife programs at the Shumen Affiliate about the advantages and disadvantages of online education enabled us to focus on the development of innovative practices, integrating technology in the process of teaching and learning, and the use of digital technology in onsite learning.
The respondents rated the availability of electronic resources for the development of hybrid forms of education combining onsite and online learning, as relatively high.
Synchronous education, which is the backbone of online education at the Medical University of Varna, creates conditions to maintain the so-called “social presence”, which is a prerequisite for involvement in the learning process and suppresses the feeling of isolation and stress among students. All these dimensions have a significant relevance to the effectiveness of learning.