Exploring Educators’ Perceptions and Experiences of Online Teaching to Foster Caring Profession Students’ Development of Virtual Caring Skills: Sequential Explanatory Mixed Methods Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Professionals in caring disciplines have been pivotal in advancing virtual care, which leverages remote technologies to deliver effective support and services from a distance. Educators in these caring professions are required to teach students the skills and competencies needed to provide high-quality and effective care. As virtual care becomes more integral, educators must equip students in these fields with both interpersonal and technological skills, bridging traditional hands-on learning with digital literacy. However, there is a gap in evidence exploring educators' perceptions and experiences of teaching caring profession students about virtual caring skills within online environments. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to better understand caring profession educators' online teaching experiences to foster student development of virtual caring skills and competencies. METHODS: We used a sequential explanatory mixed methods approach that integrated a cross-sectional survey and individual interviews with educators from caring professions to better understand caring professional educators' online teaching experiences to foster student development of virtual caring skills and competencies. The survey's primary objectives were to examine the various elements of existing e-learning opportunities, delve into educators' perspectives and encounters with these opportunities, and identify the factors that either facilitated or hindered online teaching practices to support students in developing virtual caring skills and competencies. The individual interview guides were based on survey findings and a systematic review of the evidence to gain deeper insights into educators' experiences and perspectives. RESULTS: A total of 82 survey participants and 8 interview participants were drawn from educators in the fields of education, medicine, nursing, and social work. Various instructional methods were used to help students develop virtual caring skills, including reflections on learning, online modules, online discussion boards, demonstrations of remote care, and consultation with clients. There was a statistically significant difference between educators' level of experience teaching online and their satisfaction with online teaching and learning technologies (P<.001) and between educators' faculties (departments) and their satisfaction with online teaching and learning technologies (P=.001). Participants identified barriers (time constraints, underdeveloped curriculum, decreased student engagement, and limited access to virtual caring equipment and technology), facilitators (clearly defined learning objectives, technology software and support, teaching support, stakeholder engagement, and flexibility), and principles of teaching virtual caring skills in online environments (connection, interaction, compassion, empathy, care, and vulnerability). CONCLUSIONS: Our study identifies the barriers, facilitators, and principles in teaching virtual caring skills, offering practical strategies for educators in caring professions. This study contributes to the growing body of educational research on virtual caring skills by offering educator insights and suggestions for improved teaching and learning strategies in caring professions' programs. As educational practices evolve, future research should explore how traditionally in-person educators can effectively teach virtual caring skills across diverse contexts.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".