Western University of Health Sciences (WesternU), College of Graduate Nursing (CGN), in coordination with the Online Education Department, embarked on a year-long project to develop an online orientation course within the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) designed for all first year CGN students. Students completed modules that oriented them to various resources and skills required to successfully navigate throughout their academic program. The online orientation course was launched in July 2023 prior to matriculation of incoming students for fall 2023.
Over several years, student feedback regarding student experiences with the orientation schedule has been reviewed. Responses received from students conveyed an overload of information, and subsequent exhaustion, from attending full days of presentations during Orientation/Welcome Week. Students expressed the desire to spend synchronous time networking with faculty and students rather than passively listening to information. CGN realized that the synchronous delivery method did not always meet the needs of our non-traditional, post-licensure students who are practicing nurses with various career and personal/family obligations.
Our goal as a college in developing an orientation course was twofold: 1) To reduce the amount of synchronous time students spent obtaining orientation information during Welcome Week, whether it was on campus or remotely via Zoom, and 2) To provide an asynchronous platform to deliver the orientation content in self-paced modules over several weeks before the start of the fall term. The course would also be accessible to students to review information, when needed, throughout their program of study at WesternU. In addition, CGN was able to sunset a pre-program academic course by folding in the content from that course into the online orientation modules. This afforded students the ability to accommodate their work schedules, reduced unnecessary expenses, and provided time in which to complete the orientation program in a student centered/self-paced modular approach.
The development of this course required commitment from many CGN faculty, staff, and campus-wide partners. In addition to providing students with college-specific resources, the orientation course provides information from the LEAD Office, the University Library, and the Registrar’s Office. The Online Education Department played an instrumental role in the coordination and development of the orientation modules, lending their expertise in online learning modalities, media treatments, and in project management. Information Technology (IT) personnel, the university videographer and photographers, freelance video editors and graphic artists, and student volunteers were also involved in this project. Monthly and weekly meetings were scheduled, and countless hours were spent developing content, recording in the university studio, staging photos, and editing video content.
The extraordinary commitment the WesternU community has toward student-centeredness and the tenets of our philosophy of humanism was wholeheartedly embraced from initiation to completion of this work. All team members were invested and worked collectively on this project demonstrating drive, passion, talent, tenacity, and a spirit of collaboration and camaraderie. This project is a reminder that there is nothing we cannot accomplish together for our students and the advancement of the university.