Academic Achievement of Undergraduate Nursing Students in The Faculty of Nursing Before And During Corona Pandemic

Abstract

Background: Universities were abruptly obliged to move to e-learning as a result of the Corona pandemic, and the University of Tripoli's College of Nursing was one among such institutions. From there, the research came to show the reality of using e-learning in the College of Nursing at the University of Tripoli, Libya. Under these circumstances. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to compare the academic achievement of second semester nursing students in the faculty of nursing before and during the Corona pandemic. Method: Using the quantitative comparative research design with all population sampling, a total of 148 nursing students were utilized as the sample. 88 of which were allotted before Corona pandemic while samples of 60 during the Corona pandemic. Data were collected from the college study and exams office, which were the final grade of the selected course in the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020 and the first semester of the academic year 2020-2021. The collected data were statistically analyzed using SPSS version 24, with t-test used to compare the effect of e-learning on student achievement in Fundamentals of Nursing 2 course (NU113) during the Corona pandemic to that of face-to-face learning prior to the Corona pandemic. Results: The results revealed that the average academic achievement scores for students before the Corona pandemic with face-to-face education was 56.76 and that the average academic achievement scores for students during the Corona pandemic with e-learning was 56.23. Significance levels were set at α≤ 0.05 was considered as statistically significant for all analyses of comparison between student scores before and during the Corona pandemic. The results showed that there is no statistically significant difference in academic achievement between students who studied e-learning and face-to-face education, with (p=0.868 > α). Ho is accepted, which means that the transition to e-learning rather than face-to-face education had no negative impact on academic achievement, it was found that nursing students academic achievement is not negatively affected by the Corona   pandemic. Conclusion: In this way, e-learning can be harnessed and developed to advance the nursing education agenda. Further study is recommended to assess the impact of e-learning on students’ academic achievement on other courses.