Limited interaction between instructor and student

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and sudden impact on many areas of life
specifically educational processes in formal and informal learning environments. As a
result, higher education institutions are becoming more aware of the diversity of their
current and potential students, and are working to provide a variety of engagement
options.
An instructor is an individual who supports students to attain knowledge, competencies,
or values (Brophy, 2017). A student is a person or learner who is registered in an
educational institution and is under the direct supervision of an educator (Brophy, 2017).
Thus, student-instructor interaction focuses on the dialogue between students and the
instructor. Moore (1989) states that during student-instructor interaction, the instructor
seeks to stimulate or at least maintain the student's interest in what is to be taught and
to motivate the students to learn. However, due to the pandemic, online learning has
moved all student-teacher interaction to a screen, either with Zoom, Google Meet, or
some other platform or via email. Now, there is limited interaction in how we
communicate and teacher needs to set up appointments to talk to their student.
According to Muirhead, 2007 and Barker et al., 2013 they explained that information
communication technologies covering e-learning programs are increasing in higher
educational institutions as a means of communication and knowledge sharing. Yet, with
the advent of online teaching, clinical instructors can only see his/her students on the
screen instead of having personal interaction making it a limitation for learners to learn
physically. Pourghaznein et al., 2015 support this idea, stating that physical learning is
necessary for the nursing profession because nurses require access to current
information on diseases, treatments, drugs, and new skills.
Moreover, instructors have to set up appointments to talk and it is harder to learn and
understand the nursing concept if time is limited. According to Herman 2020, lectures
do not take place at a specified time but are recorded as videos or podcasts.
Assignments are done on a computer, often graded by a computer, and class size is no
longer limited by room size but can grow to accommodate any number of students. In
practice, this means that the student attends the class on his or her own. The professor
and the students have no immediate interaction, and the students have no immediate
interaction. It's just a student staring at a screen, waiting for their professors to speak.
Exposure to patients in the clinical setting is one of the most important experiences for
student nurses. It is here that they come face to face with the human side of nursing.
Clinical placement is the venue where skills, knowledge, and attitudes developed in the
theoretical part of the curriculum are applied, developed, and integrated from an
educational standpoint (Newton et al., 2010). However, due to the online learning setup,
it hinders the proper execution of nursing procedures and there’s limited feedback that
takes place during return demonstration. According to Chan (2009), the clinical nursing
environment is the most influential context for gaining nursing skills and knowledge
among student nurses. That’s why it is a must that clinical instructors need to teach it
physically to address the proper clinical flow of procedures to the students.
To sum up, it is concluded that longstanding challenges have emerged with the
pandemic, and the limited interaction among students and instructors provides
disadvantages. Nursing care is presential and indispensable. Thus, the formation of
professionals to take care of human lives requires knowledge, skills, and attitudes.