Nurse Educators’ readiness to use blended learning in public nursing education institutions in Gauteng Province, South Africa

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Readiness for blended learning is described as the nurse educators' ability and preparedness to use Information Communication Technology. Blended Learning involves integrating both e-learning and face-to-face learning to complement the benefits of both designs. Blended learning has recently gained popularity as an effective instructional design in nursing education due to the advancement of information communication technology innovations. Even though it has become mandatory for all public nursing education institutions to use blended learning, nurse educators are still experiencing challenges related to adaptation to Blended learning, redesigning teaching activities and methods required to optimise positive learning experiences. Therefore, nurse educators are challenged to be competent in using information communication technology devices and designing blended learning-based programs as key performance areas for successful implementation of blended learning in public nursing education institutions in Gauteng Province. AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate nurse educators’ readiness to use blended learning in public nursing education institutions of Gauteng Province. METHODOLOGY: This study applied a quantitative research methodology, and descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. A sample of 217 participants was selected from a population of 500 nurse educators, using a simple random sampling. Data was collected using an adopted and modified survey questionnaire. Statistical Analysis System statistical software was used to analyse the data an alpha of 0,05 was used as the level of significance. The study consists of 87.5% female compared to 11,11% male participants with the average age of 46years from the minimum age of 32 to maximum of 62 years. Majority of participants were from black ethnicity employed as lecturers (68,5%) and 33,6% of the participants had a degree in nursing. RESULTS: There was no significance (p>0.05) identified between respondents’ educational level and employment classification, with most of the questions associated with the three variables. Nonetheless, there was some significance (p=0.0075), between respondents’ age group and willingness to use Blended Learning if introduced in the institution, Age group was associated with respondents’ belief that it is a good intervention to use Blended Learning in the institution (p=0.0029). Employment classification was associated with respondents’ possession of insufficient knowledge and skills to use Blended Learning (p=0.0493). Educational level was associated with respondents’ anticipation that Blended Learning will be easy to use once introduced (p=0.0429). Thus, the null hypothesis of no association was rejected. RECOMMENDATIONS: The study recommended that the management of nursing education institutions should consider utilisation of Chapnick’s readiness model in terms of technical, psychological, equipment, infrastructure, among other aspects for prior assessment before the actual implementation of BL pedagogy to ensure sustainability KEY WORDS: Blended learning, Gauteng province, information communication technology, nurse educators, public nursing education institutions, readiness.