PEDAGOGICAL COMPETENCE IN PROGRAMS TRANSITIONING TO DISTANCE DELIVERY: Leadership, pedagogical competence and technological teaching/learning environment in a distance nursing program

1. PEDAGOGICAL COMPETENCE AMONGST
FACULTY IN (NURSING) PROGRAMS
TRANSITIONING TO DISTANCE DELIVERY
A Critical Review
by Renia Nissan and Kelli Ralph

2. SEARCH STRATEGY
 How was the article selected?
 A peer-reviewed journal article search was done by
utilizing the Athabasca Library databases. Amongst
those that resulted, an article was chosen that best
reflected nursing and online or distance education
research done in the last decade.

3. ARTICLE REVIEWED
 Vioral, A. (2013). Exploring pedagogical competence in a
distance education program: A case study. Journal of
Nursing Education and Practice, 3(9), 36-47. doi:
10.5430/jnep.v3n9p36

4. SUMMARY OF ARTICLE

5. ISSUES:
 General Issue: Pedagogical competence in programs
transitioning to distance delivery
 Specific issues highlighted/addressed in article:
 Worldwide nursing and faculty shortages
 Introduction of technology-mediated distance education in nursing
 Faculty hired based on need, not based on pedagogical preparation
and competence
 Faculty must learn new pedagogical roles to develop and implement
distance education that incorporates the use of technology

6. STUDY OBJECTIVE
 Describe how online nursing programs deliver
education to meet the NLN Nurse Educator Core
Competencies and the iNACOL National
Standards of Quality for Online Courses
 How are nursing programs addressing
pedagogical competency standards set by the
NLN and iNACOL

7. METHODOLOGY
 Case study design
 Enabled simultaneous data collection and analysis
 Purposive Sampling
 Inclusion Criteria
 Nursing programs in US that had been awarded the NLN
Center of Excellence Award twice in past decade
 Offered online BSN, MSN, PHD, and/or DNP programs
 Target Sample Size: N=6
 (1 administrator and 1 faculty member from 3 institutions)

8. METHODOLOGY: INSTRUMENTS
 Data Collection: Mixed-Methods Approach
 Quantitative data: Pre-interview Surveys
 Nursing Administrator Self-Assessment Survey of Quality for Online
Courses
 Nursing Faculty Self-Assessment Survey of Quality for Online Courses
 Qualitative data: Audio-taped Interviews (30-60 minutes)
 Guided interview questions
 Example: “Describe specific nursing faculty requirements for the
development of online courses in your institution”
 “Additional data”: Administrative documents
 Nursing program strategic plan, CCNE self-study report, program and
institution mission statements, NLN Center of Excellence application,
assessment tools utilizing in conjunction with tenure decisions)

9. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK APPLIED
 Contingency Leadership Theory
 Focuses on relationship between an organization and the
environment
 Effective patterns of organizational structure and behaviour are
contingent on environmental and task demands
 Changes in an environment require appropriate changes in
patterns of the organization to deal with the environment
 Application to DE: Successful DE programs are contingent on
three interconnected variables:
 Technological environment
 Pedagogical competence
 Leadership

10. STUDY FINDINGS / INTERPRETATIONS
 Themes Identified:
 Technological Environment
 Pedagogy
 Leadership
 Applied the Contingency Leadership Theory
framework to link these emergent themes

11. STRENGTHS OF THE ARTICLE/STUDY

12. STRENGTHS OF ARTICLE/STUDY
 Article was well written, well organized with section
headings, and easy to follow
 Rich review of literature
 Applied the Contingency Leadership Theory as a
theoretical framework
 Appropriate and relevant for research regarding institutional
and organizational processes
 Provided rationale for utilizing case study design, grounded
in the background literature
 Research questions were relevant to the general issues and
addressed a gap in existing literature

13. STRENGTHS OF ARTICLE/STUDY
 Study followed standard protocols for case study design
 Defined the study’ target participants, measures, and protocols for data
collection and analysis
 Provided rationale for the inclusion criteria with links to background literature
 Adequate detail provided to enable study to be replicated
 Detailed description of how categories and themes emerged from the data
 Application of pattern-matching logic and idealized theoretic patterns as
comparators to maximize internal validity
 The findings flow from the data and appropriately address the research
questions
 Findings provide insights that may be relevant / generalizable to other
distance education programs

14. WEAKNESSES OF THE ARTICLE/STUDY

15. LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES OF
ARTICLE/STUDY
 No rationale provided for target sample size (N=6)
 Small sample size recruited (N=2)
 Homogeneous, from a single program/institution
 Additional participants not recruited due to time constraints of the
researcher
 Limited the richness and internal validity of the study
 Including participants representing other roles in the DE team – at
minimum, an instructional designer – would have strengthened this study
 Participant bias in quantitative and qualitative data:
 No anonymity
 Full disclosure impeded by fear of retribution
 Why wasn’t this identified and dealt with during the ethics review
process?

16. LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES OF
ARTICLE/STUDY
 Survey bias?
Author makes contradictory statements:
 States the surveys do encompass NLN & iNACOL standards
 States the surveys do not encompass NLN & iNACOL
standards
What was the rationale for using these surveys?

17. LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES OF
ARTICLE/STUDY
 Superficial use of combined quantitative and qualitative data
 Surveys ultimately provided little value beyond collecting
demographic data
 Unclear how “interview data was used to validate survey data”, as
author claims
 BUT, as a limitation, author describes that this study didn’t include activities
to validate the survey tools used
 Survey results do not appear to be included in the analysis
 For instance, Table 1. summarizes identified themes and categories, but did
these emerge solely from the guided interview questions listed in the table?
 Pattern-matching logic and idealized theoretic patterns as
comparators are not described
 “Additional data” collected from administrative documents reported
descriptively, but with unclear link to study analysis and findings

18. LIMITATIONS AND WEAKNESSES OF
ARTICLE/STUDY
 Author suggests case study design limits
generalizability of this study’s findings
However!!!
 Application of Contingency Leadership Theory
contribution to this study’s generalizability

19. IMPORTANCE AND RELEVANCE

20. RELEVANCE TO DISTANCE EDUCATION
 Explores topics of great importance to the study of distance
education because it provides insights on the supports and
barriers to successfully implementing distance programs
that center learning around the student
 Provides evidence-based information that can inform
program/institutional processes and policies for preparing
and supporting faculty teaching in the online setting
 Presents a specific target for nursing program leadership
for supporting/improving the pedagogical competence of
their faculty:
 Implement NLN and iNACOL competency
standards, or standards of good practice based on
these

21. RELEVANCE TO DISTANCE EDUCATION
 Contributes to existing literature by providing an
alternative view focusing on the levels of
preparedness amongst DE faculty
 Addresses a gap in the existing research literature
 Provides background and a mandate for future
research
 Corroborates previous research that identifies
structure, organization and consistency as critical
factors in improving student learning outcomes

22. CONCLUSION
 The article served the purpose of focusing on the
study of distance education while exploring the
professional discipline of nursing, and the
barriers and resources available to successfully
implementing education, in an online setting
 It served as a basis for further research that
accounts for centering student learning, while
improving the resources, in this case the faculty

23. Please follow the link below to view our cognitive
map, which provides more details of our review.
This cognitive map represents a visual-based
knowledge object co-created using a Web 2.0 tool.
http://www.mindmeister.com/420923693
AND……..
COGNITIVE MAP…

24. QUESTIONS TO PONDER
Please read, reflect on and respond to at least 2 of the following questions:
 Is specific training in distance/online education the best way to ensure
pedagogical competence amongst faculty? Why or why not. How and what
alternatives might effectively facilitate the development of pedagogical
competence in developing and delivering distance/online education?
 Would you recommend that faculty undertake specific pedagogical
training in developing and delivering distance/online education? Why or
why not. What would a training program for faculty look like? What topics
and skills development would it cover?
 In what ways might students be impacted by the differences in
pedagogical competencies between faculty who have undertaken vs. not
undertaken specific training in developing and delivering distance/online
education? Do you think training makes a difference? Why or why not.

25. QUESTIONS TO PONDER
 How have technological environment, instructional design, instructor
pedagogical competence, and program administrative structures supported
and/or impeded your own learning in distance/online courses?
 What learning barriers have you experienced in your distance/online courses,
and how might they have been prevented/resolved? What elements have
provided the best support to your learning?
 What insights does this study provide regarding the different roles
(administrative/leadership, instructional design, technical support, faculty)
involved in developing and delivering a distance education program/course?
Why are these roles critical, and what might be the consequences be if one of
these roles were absent? Is leadership the most critical role? Why or why not?
 How might the findings of this case study of one online nursing program be
relevant (or not relevant) to distance education in other disciplines and to
distance education in general? What aspects of the findings of this study might
not be relevant to other distance education programs? What insights does this
study contribute to the existing knowledge about pedagogical competence in
distance education, and what knowledge gaps does this study not address?

26. REFERENCES
Hoffmann, R., & Dudjak, L.A. (2012). From Onsite to Online: Lessons
learned from Faculty Pioneers. Journal of Professional
Nursing, 28(4), 255-258.
Lee, D., Paulus, T. M., Loboda, I., Phipps, G., Wyatt, T. H., Myers, C. R.,
Mixer, S. J. (2010). A faculty development program for nurse
educators learning to teach online. Tech Trends, 54(6), 20-28.
Sad, S.N., Goktas, O., & Bayrak, I. (2014). A comparison of student
views on Web-based and face-to-face higher education. Turkish
Online Journal of Distance Education, 15(2), 209-226.
Vioral, A. (2013). Exploring pedagogical competence in a distance
education nursing program: A case study. Journal of Nursing
Education and Practice, 3(9), 36-47. DOI:
10.5430/jnep.v3n9p36

27. THANK YOU!!!