Nursing Instructors’ and Students’ Experiences of Transition from Face-to-Face Education to Virtual Education during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Table 1

The subcategories, subthemes, and main themes of nursing instructors’ and students’ experiences of virtual education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Themes	Subthemes	Subcategories
VE as a double-edged sword	VE as a threat	Boring and nonattractive virtual education; Challenges and problems of virtual education; Students’ and instructors’ limited commitment to virtual education; Instructors’ limited control over the process of virtual education; Reduced quality of learning in virtual education
	VE as an opportunity	Continuation of education in a safe environment; Enjoyment education without serious limitations and coercion; Possibility to attend different webinars without serious limitations
	Necessity to improve VE	Planning and revising at the macrolevel; Empowerment of instructors and students; Improvement of instructors’ and students’ commitment to education
Weaknesses in clinical education	Reduced quality of clinical education	Students’ poor clinical skills due to nonattendance in hospital settings; High risk of affliction by COVID-19 in clinical education; Provision of clinical education through theoretical courses; Clinical education in inappropriate and irrelevant wards
	Necessity to compensate for students’ retarded clinical learning	Continuation of face-to-face education through adherence to COVID-19 prevention protocols; Using complementary educational methods
Reduced effectiveness of virtual student evaluation	Cheating as a problem of virtual evaluation	Cheating through different methods; The high probability of copying assignments from each other
	Stresses and tensions of virtual evaluation	Stress over the disconnection of the internet or the problems of the virtual evaluation system during exams; Inadequate time to answer questions; Arbitrary evaluation by instructors
	Necessity to use new strategies in virtual evaluation	Flexibility in evaluation; Formative evaluation throughout the semester; Giving assignments and class projects