Nursing faculty readiness to teach online: a survey of nursing educators from Saudi Arabia and UK

Background: Nursing Faculty’s readiness to teach online has been recognized as a critical prerequisite for effective online teaching.

Aim: To examine the Nursing Faculty’s level of readiness to teach online among a sample of nursing educators from Saudi Arabia and the UK.

Methods: A convenient sample of 152 (46%) Nursing Faculty from five universities across Saudi Arabia and the UK completed Part 2 of The Faculty Readiness to Teach Online (FRTO)’ survey between February – June 2021. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis One-Way Analysis of Variance tests were used to examine the differences in the average median scores of the participants’ responses across selected independent variables.

Results: Nursing Faculty from Saudi Arabia universities have scored significantly higher Median score than their British counterparts on the Course Design subscale (z=-2.6, p = 0.01) and Time Management subscale (z=-4.403, p = 0.001), and Nursing Faculty who completed a training course before they can teach online have also scored significantly higher median score than those who didn’t on the same two subscales respectively (X₂ = 6.15, df = 2, p = 0.05), (X₂ = 12, df = 2, p = 0.002). Female Nursing Faculty scored significantly higher median score than male Nursing Faculty on the Course Communication subscale (z=-2.73,p = 0.006). Moreover, Nursing Faculty who mostly used asynchronous online teaching significantly scored the highest median score on the technical subscale (X₂ = 8.64, df = 3, p = 0.03). The number of years of teaching online emerged as a key factor for defining the Nursing Faculty’s level of readiness to teach online. For example, those Nursing Faculty with 6 years and longer of online teaching experience have scored significantly higher median scores on in Course Communication (X₂ = 23.4, df = 4, p = 0.00), Time Management (X₂ = 13.2, df = 4, p = 0.01) and Technical (X₂ = 10.13, df = 4, p = 0.008) subscales compared with those with less than 6 year of online teaching experience. Nursing Faculty across Saudi and British universities who teach on MSc program have scored significantly higher median scores than those who teach on other programs on all four subscales.

Conclusion: The Nursing Faculty expressed a high level of competency in teaching online, with significant variations based on socio-demographic parameters. Future research needs to examine the factors that shape the Nursing Faculty’s readiness to teach online.