Dunn, Anita, Harrison, Helena, Northam, Holly L., and Birks, Melanie (2024) Engagement in Online Postgraduate Nursing Programs: An Integrative Review. Sage Open, 14 (2).

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Abstract

Demand for online education has increased in recent decades. Uptake of postgraduate nursing education in this mode is on the rise, yet many students do not achieve completion. Student engagement is vital to success in online postgraduate nursing programs. Technology enables a more efficient means of monitoring engagement, yet limited literature is available on how the design of online postgraduate nursing programs impacts student engagement. This integrative review aims to identify barriers and facilitators to engaging in online postgraduate nursing programs. Four databases, including Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Education Resources Information Center, Scopus, and Medline, were systematically searched to identify relevant literature published over the period 1990 to 2022. Fifteen papers met the inclusion criteria. Thematic analysis generated three themes: design and delivery, support and connectivity, and student factors and success. The findings of this review uncover the range of indiscriminate variables and experiences that students have with online learning, making engaging instructional design a complex process. Nursing faculty require time and resources to develop skills specific to delivering “distance” education without being distant to the students. This review concludes that online postgraduate nursing programs are not a panacea, with ethical issues identified for higher education providers.

Item ID:	85997
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2158-2440
Copyright Information:	Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Date Deposited:	01 Jul 2025 00:05
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3901 Curriculum and pedagogy > 390110 Medicine, nursing and health curriculum and pedagogy @ 50% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4205 Nursing > 420505 Nursing workforce @ 50%
SEO Codes:	20 HEALTH > 2003 Provision of health and support services > 200307 Nursing @ 100%
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