The development of an online course on leadership development and change management for nurse executives in ASEAN countries

Siritarungsri Boontip, Noimuenwai Premruetai, Cheevakasemsook Aree Kaewsarn and Puttapitukpol Somjai
Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University
Nonthaburi, Thailand

In 2015, ASEAN member countries will combine into the ASEAN Community, building a regional society for their populations to live together in kinship in the same family. The nursing profession is one of the seven key services which have been accelerated by ASEAN to combine together to move internationally towards the top of global quality services. This climate has inspired visionary researchers to develop short course training on Leadership Development and Change Management for Nurse Executives in ASEAN Countries (LCM Project).

The purposes of this research and development were: (1) to develop an online course for the LCM Project, and (2) to evaluate the online course. The training course was divided into two phases: Phase 1, an online course consisting of ten modules related to leadership development and change management; and Phase 2, intensive face-to-face seminars that emphasized special lectures, group interaction for network development and innovative developments in nursing administration. This paper presents only the online course activities.

Seventy-four participants were recruited by purposive sampling from nurse executives and registered nurses in five ASEAN member countries, namely Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Lao PDR and Vietnam. A LCM website (http://www.stou.ac.th/lcm) was created for supporting learning, and sharing knowledge and valuable experiences. All the participants who registered to attend the online course carried out the following three activities. Firstly, they learned by taking part in the online modules, learning one module per week, and then provided reflections on each module, with the LCM team acting as facilitators. Secondly, they jointly shared the knowledge gained from their learning and experience in a ‘knowledge-sharing' forum. Lastly, each participant developed a mini innovative project or a creative work task based on the project components. On completing these three activities, they came to intensive face-to-face seminars for the second phase.

The research findings were as follows.

1 The online course was developed by a course team, comprised of the LCM project team, resource persons and participants' views based on the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education.
2 The online course was evaluated by the participants, most of whom were found to be satisfied with it. The online course was also appropriate for use in nurse development in ASEAN countries. However, in learning online the following problems were found in module accessibility: poor local infrastructure technology, the self-disciplined of learners, and limitations of language and culture in communication — and these issues will be discussed further.