[Upcoming Presentation] Teaching Pre-Nursing Science Courses with Laboratory Delivered Totally Online

Dr. James Brown, the Godfather of Online Science, will be presenting at OLC Accelerate this Friday, November 18, 2016, in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Brown’s presentation is entitled: “Teaching Pre-Nursing Science Courses with Laboratory Delivered Totally Online.” The presentation will focus on innovative and emerging methods for placing pre-nursing science courses totally online and will include specific challenges inherent in Anatomy and Physiology, Microbiology and Chemistry.

TEACHING PRE-NURSING SCIENCE COURSES WITH LABORATORY DELIVERED TOTALLY ONLINE

Friday November 18, 2016 – 11:45 AM to 12:30 PM

Concurrent Session 12

To reach beyond traditional students many nursing programs have turned to online courses to attract students into nursing programs taking many if not all of their non-clinical courses online. This allows potential nursing students who are constrained by time, distance, family or work obligations to complete pre-nursing courses so they can begin a nursing program. The required science courses which typically include Anatomy and Physiology I and II, Microbiology and a basic Chemistry course all include laboratories and require students to attend lectures twice a week as well as a 3 hour laboratory session. This can be prohibitive for students who are working full time jobs, have significant family responsibilities, or have to travel a distance to attend college.

The type of laboratory experience that the online pre-nursing student encounters has become a critical issue with respect to course transferability. The pros and cons of providing laboratory experiences via virtual laboratories versus by “labs” that students can perform in their own homes (and in the case of deployed military, wherever home may be) will be discussed and highlighted. The different modes of delivering online science laboratories and the different strategies involved in face-to-face, hybrid, virtual or remote “wet labs” will be analyzed and summarized. For example, is it better for students to use a real microscope to observe cell structure in anatomy and physiology or a bacterium that they grew up on a petri dish and Gram stained and observed them under oil immersion? Or is it just as good to use a virtual microscope on the computer to simulate a”real” laboratory? There are now many commercially available online labs such as Hands-On Labs, Inc. LabPaq and Lab Bridge, eScience Labs, McGraw-Hill LearnSmart Labs, Glencoe Biology Virtual Laboratory Simulations, Carolina Science Online, science lab simulations with Late Nite Labs, offering a variety of options.

Students are now able to complete online science pre-nursing courses at one college or university in another part of the country and transfer them into a traditional nursing program to complete their nursing degree. Many nursing programs now offer everything but clinical experience totally online and the availability of the online pre-requisite science courses has helped make this a reality. Online science courses have allowed certified nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses, or associate degree nurses to advance their nursing education to the next level while working full time.

Lastly, the factors that are relevant for course transfer, assessment, student success and accreditation will be addressed with respect to the overall evaluation of the online science laboratory courses.

Presenter: James Brown, Kean University

Dr. James Brown is a pioneer in online course development in science. He has been dubbed the “Godfather of Online Science” and recently has been designated One of the Top 40 Innovators in Education by the Center for Digital Education. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in microbiology from the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University and an additional M.S. in Health Sciences from New Jersey City University. His is a former director of microbiology for Roche and an Assistant Commissioner of Health for New Jersey overseeing the Division of Public Health and Environmental Laboratories. He is a former dean of Science, Engineering, Health Sciences and Human Performance for Ocean County College that became an East-coast powerhouse for online science course development with over 14 unique online science courses. He is president of James W. Brown Associates LLC which develops online science courses for colleges and universities with a special focus on the pre-nursing science courses of Anatomy and Physiology, Microbiology and Chemistry which are all designed using Hands-On Labs LabPaqs and LabBridge as the foundation for the laboratory experience. He developed the Online Science Laboratory Series for the Sloan Consortium (now named the Online Learning Consortium) in the Spring of 2014 which helps train science faculty and instructional designers in how to develop online courses in science. Dr. Brown teaches science totally online at California State University at San Marcos, Colorado Christian University, American Public University, Unitek College, City University of New York and Gwynedd Mercy University.