Satisfaction Rate with Virtual Education Programs during COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Relationship with Their Academic Performance among Nursing Students

With the emergence of the Covid-19 disease and its effects, education shifted to distance and virtual education. Discovering students' satisfaction toward virtual education helps educational planners achieve more effective virtual education. On the other hand, students' academic performance is one of the criteria for the efficiency of the educational system, and poor academic performance results in wasting time, cost, and resources of educational centers. Therefore, this study aimed to determine Satisfaction rate with Virtual Education Programs during COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Relationship with Their Academic Performance among nursing students

This descriptive Correlational study was conducted in Urmia nursing and midwifery school in 2020-2021. Two hundred twenty-three nursing students in the 2nd -7th semesters were enrolled in the study through a census sampling. The data were collected by using of demographic characteristics form; the students' satisfaction and the students' Academic Performance Questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software (version22). Descriptive (absolute frequency, mean, standard deviation, and frequency distribution percentage) and analytical (Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Spearman correlation coefficient, Pearson correlation coefficient, Phi and Cramer's V correlation coefficient, linear regression, and Mann-Whitney) statistics were used to analyze the data.

The mean scores of students' satisfaction and academic performance were 149.65±16.21 and 74.35±22.94, respectively. Therefore, the students' satisfaction and academic performance were moderate (73.1%) and good (64.6%), respectively. The result showed that, there was a significant positive relationship between the students' satisfaction level and their academic performance (p<0.05, r=0.19), so that students' satisfaction level was a predictor of their academic performance (p=0.001).

Undergraduate nursing students had moderate satisfaction levels and high academic performance in online educational courses. The students' satisfaction level was positive, and it is a significant predictor of their academic performance. Thus, university officials were recommended to increase students' academic performance by gaining their satisfaction through improving conditions and eliminating the students existing problems in order to benefit from virtual education and face-to-face training in combination.