School of Nursing: Connections

New technology blurs the line between on-site and distance learning

School of Nursing learning lab, circa 1969.
(Courtesy of Lory Watkins)

Although the School of Nursing was producing instructional videotapes as early as 1968, its preeminent role in educational technology dates from 1976, when Professor Kathryn Barnard began satellite transmissions of the Nursing Child Assessment Satellite Training Project (NCAST) to 600 nurses in 19 cities nationwide. Barnard’s research on parent-child interactions went on to influence thousands of lives and became incorporated into a training program that was later delivered to health care professionals all over the world.

Today the School is involved in outreach education of many different kinds. A long history of innovation in academic programs coupled with the success of its self-sustaining Continuing Nursing Education program has provided the School with a wealth of new opportunities for enriching the educational experience. In 1998, a distance learning program was launched offering acute care nurse practitioner training for nurses in the remote Olympic Peninsula area of Washington State. Classes are offered via interactive videoconferencing with a peninsula hospital and Internet communication with the School.

With increasing web-based education, however, the line is beginning to blur between "distance education" and enhanced learning opportunities for residential or local students. Today, students who attend classes on campus are accessing information about courses or actual instructional material over the Internet, much as distance learning students do. And, thanks to a technology-training program called SONNETS, which is an acronym for School of Nursing Net Education Technology Seminars, increasing numbers of faculty are learning to teach with networked technology. Cliff Solomon, one of the School’s two web managers, notes that the School "has always done a very good job of supporting the development of new instructional formats." The bi-monthly SONNETS presentations by Solomon and fellow webmaster Aubrey Hale cover a range of topics relating to the use of the Internet in education. Although some faculty members are "pretty savvy" about computer technology, says Solomon, others are "wary" about dipping their toes into cyberspace. The SONNETS workshops familiarize faculty with web-based education, teach them how to use PowerPoint, and offer instruction about creating online quizzes, a personal home page, and reading and writing with HTML. Since the SONNETS program began last June, Solomon reports that many more faculty are now using educational technology in a wide range of nursing education courses.

Return to Winter 1999 Headlines