Nursing Students' Perception About The Usability And Efficiency of Virtual Laboratories

Abstract

Background: Virtual labs have been demonstrated to be as effective or possibly more effective for student learning across a broad set of students and have shown relative agreement on the usefulness of virtual labs for topic knowledge and cognitive growth. Aim of the study: Assess nursing students’ perception about usability and efficiency of virtual laboratories. Design: A descriptive analytical design was used to conduct this study. Setting: The study was conducted in the academic structure at faculty of nursing Ain shams university, Cairo. Sample: A stratified sample composed of 323 students, were chosen by simple random sample from the previously mentioned setting. Tools of data collection: two tools were used to collect the data, 1st tool: "Self- administered questionnaire", which include 3 parts, Part I: Nursing student’s socio-demographic characteristics. Part II: Nursing student’s knowledge about virtual laboratory. Part III: Nursing student’s reported practices regarding usability of virtual laboratory 2nd tool: Attitude scale (Likert scale) to assess nursing students’ attitude about virtual laboratory adapted from (Turkey., 2022). Results: 68% of the studied nursing students had a satisfactory level of total knowledge. 62.8% of the studied nursing students had done reported practices. 72.1% of the studied nursing students had positive attitude regarding usability and efficiency of virtual laboratory. Conclusion: There was a highly statistically significant relation between the total level of knowledge of students and their reported practice. A highly statistically significant relation between the total level of knowledge of students and their attitude and a highly statistically significant relation between total reported practices of students and their attitude. Also, there was a highly statistically significant strong positive correlation between total level of knowledge, total practice, and total attitude. Recommendations: Increase nursing students’ awareness of virtual laboratories by organizing comprehensive workshops and training courses. Further research with larger samples with the teachers and students from other universities doing health science degrees (medicine, pharmacy, psychology, etc).