Enriching Biosciences in Undergraduate Nursing Programs: Establishment and Assessment of Online Video Resources

Abstract

Bioscience courses in health programmes increasingly include students with limited ‘on-campus’ or face-to-face teaching exposure. These students need resources that are flexible, technologically innovative, easily accessible, engaging, and above all effective for learning. We created and evaluated a bank of short (7-15min) Anatomy & Physiology concept-captured video tutorials (CCVTs), accessible and downloadable through University websites. The CCVTs were linked with formative quiz questions. Utilising a prospective, semi-longitudinal design, we explored the effect of CCVTs on summative student performance across three geographically and socially disparate campuses of the same University in Queensland, Australia. Each semester, approximately 630 first year undergraduate nursing students had access to the CCVTs and quizzes; of these, 1 in 3 engaged with the CCVTs and comparative pre/post quizzes. Quiz results were used to evaluate the impact of CCVTs on concept consolidation. Results demonstrated that five out of ten CCVTs in semester 1 and eight out of ten in semester 2 positively correlated with concept consolidation. The number of CCVTs accessed (engagement) was positively correlated with individual course grades (pass/fail) and overall marks (out of 100). The participating students highly rated the perceived usefulness of the CCVTs as supportive learning resources. We conclude that the establishment of a relatively low-tech, remotely accessed, online learning resource can enrich student experience and support performance in perceivably difficult biosciences courses.