Surveys of On-Line Lecture Influence on Nursing Students during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Background: To prevent the spread of COVID-19 infections, many educational institutions began to provide on-line classes in many countries, and there are many reports of how to deal with technical issues for this kind of classes. However, there are few studies on on-line lectures published and even fewer studies focusing on on-line nursing education. Objectives: This study aims to understand the situation of on-line lectures provided by the Faculty of Nursing at University A, including the environment and learning of nursing students for the first three months of on-line study, as well as to explore time-line changes in the evaluations of the on-line lectures and physical conditions of the students. Design: Time-line surveys. Settings/Participants: Participants were 251 nursing undergraduate students of a nursing university in Japan during COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: From April to July 2020, students were requested to participate in surveys through the student bulletin board available to the university, and questionnaire surveys were conducted at four time points using the Google Drive questionnaire form. Results: More than 95% of students reported that they had no problem accessing classes in the second and third surveys. More than 80% of students answered that the on-line lectures were “very good”, “reasonably good”, and “usual” in the second, third, and fourth surveys. In the third and fourth surveys, students with shoulder and lower back pain and those with psychological stress had significantly lower ratings for on-line lectures. Further when comparing students with and without psychological stress symptoms, there was a difference of 0.7 or more in the mean point value of the evaluation of on-line lectures. Conclusions: Students with psychological symptoms had more negative feelings towards on-line lectures than those with physical symptoms. This suggests that psychological symptoms may affect the continuous use of on-line lectures in the future.