Online Nursing Education: Highlighting Nursing Students’ Challenges

Background: In recent years, online nursing education has experienced phenomenal growth. As a result, time and place barriers are eliminated, and institutions and educators have understood that online education may benefit students with course accessibility and affordability. Besides, this model offered an ideal channel for engagement and communication between students, as well as with instructors and the long-available program content, on the other hand, many challenges and obstacles have emerged. Objective(s): Evaluate the online nursing education system in Iraqi universities by detecting any potential challenges of nursing students with online education. Methodology: This paper is the main part of a nationwide study. A descriptive evaluative approach is conducted to evaluate the current challenges of nursing students about online nursing education through web-based courses, programs, online examinations, and quizzes, through the period from September 10, 2020, to April 15, 2021. This study is carried out at eight Colleges of Nursing in Iraqi Universities, a sample of (320) undergraduate nursing students is recruited from these colleges using the non-probability sampling approach to gather a convenient sample. A self-report questionnaire is developed from the literature, for the evaluation process. Results: The findings indicate that all Colleges of Nursing in Iraq have experienced current challenges with online nursing education, but Colleges of Nursing in the Southern Region experienced fewer challenges than colleges in other regions. Conclusion: The study concluded that most of the students have experienced fair to poor levels of current challenges of online nursing education in Iraq respectively. There are differences between Colleges of Nursing relative to current challenges of online nursing education domains, and these challenges are influenced by students’ demographic characteristics of age, gender, monthly income, and residential area. Recommendations: For the benefit of colleges, professors, and students, this study suggests that the deployment of online nursing education should be closely supervised. Furthermore, both instructors and students should be provided with logistical support.