What contextual factors affected the development and delivery of the

There are many contextual factors that affected the development and delivery of the collaborative programs. We have grouped these into two categories: organizational factors and the larger context.

2.3.1 Organizational factors

ƒ Different mandates and cultures: Both colleges and universities aim to produce highly competent nurses. Despite this common goal, there were cultural differences between the two types of institutions. Key informants from five universities and five colleges in ten different collaborations explicitly expressed that these differences had contributed to challenges in their collaboration. On the other hand, key informants from five colleges in five different collaborations stated that the differences in mandates and cultures had contributed to giving the students the best of two worlds. The following archetypical descriptions of college and university cultures and mandates are based on the descriptions of key informants and are intended to highlight differences that will facilitate the understanding of issues discussed later in the report.

In Ontario, the mandate of the community colleges was to make higher education accessible. Colleges’ teaching style tended to be based on a one-on-one interaction, which was in line with many students’ learning styles. The focus of the faculty had historically been on teaching rather than research, and many of the faculty had an educational background in teaching (i.e., Master’s in Education). In contrast, the universities had both a research and teaching mandate and were expected to provide service to the university. The aim was to produce students with strong critical thinking and academic research skills, and generally demanded a higher level of independence from the students. Standards and expectations tended to be higher at universities (although this may not always be the case). Faculty tended to have PhDs or master’s degrees in Nursing or other disciplines. This difference in mandates poses a challenge to collaborative programs, where there may be pressures to balance the accessibility mandate of the college with the higher admission and graduation criteria of the university.

ƒ Policies and procedures: Specific policies and procedures at either of the institutions may pose challenges to collaboration, or may influence the way the collaboration was structured. Examples include university residency requirements (which limit the amount of teaching that can be taken on by the colleges),

different methods of calculating funding allocations, different course or exam schedules, or different academic policies.

ƒ Information technology: Different institutions invariably have different information systems. The ease or difficulty of transferring student information without manual data entry had a huge impact on the administrative side of things.

It affected administrative workload to the extent that information had to be entered manually in two systems, or that a lot of manipulation needed to be done in the transfer of electronic data. It had impacts on the partners’ ability to access student information in a timely way (e.g., contact information, grades, number of students), as well as on the students (e.g., ability to access resources at partner institutions, timely access to grades and other performance information, needing to make address changes at multiple institutions, falling through the cracks between the institutions). In some programs, it also made it difficult to track students through all four years of the program in relation to issues of performance in clinical and classroom courses.

ƒ Collective agreements and faculty incentive systems: These systems did not reward work spent on collaboration, such as collaborative meetings. In the university system, scholarly research was a requirement for tenure and promotion, while collaborative meetings took time away from research, possibly jeopardizing tenure opportunities. In contrast, college faculty were expected to adhere to their union’s Standard Workload Formula (SWF), which prescribed the number of hours they could spend each week on various activities, and which placed an emphasis on teaching. Some colleges had been able to build a few hours per week into the formula for research and/or collaborative meetings, but research tended to require larger investments of time.

ƒ Distance between campuses: When the partners shared the same campus, there was tremendous opportunity for face-to-face interaction, and it was easier to create a truly integrated program where all students and faculty could intermix.

Short distances between campuses were inconvenient, but face-to-face contact was still practical. With larger distances, a Type 1 or Type 4⁶ delivery structure was more likely to be effective. Joint planning and ongoing communication also became more difficult when the distances between sites were large.

ƒ Resources contributed by each partner: Each partner had different resources to contribute to a collaboration, such as curriculum, faculty, practice laboratories, practice equipment, classrooms, library resources, information technology, and course materials. The resources contributed by each partner influenced the structure of the program and its potential for growth. In some instances, the university partner did not have a full, four-year baccalaureate nursing program prior to the collaboration, which meant that the university could not contribute a

6 Type 1: students take two years at the college followed by two years at the university; Type 4: a separate group of students at each site.

pre-existing curriculum to the program, and so it needed to build its capacity to deliver nursing education (by hiring new faculty, etc.).

ƒ Language of instruction: There were few colleges and universities within Ontario that provided French-language programming, so there was limited choice in terms of which colleges could partner with which universities. One Francophone college pointed out that the shortfall of Francophone students made it difficult to support a complete Francophone program. Without Francophone programs, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet the demand for Francophone nurses in Ontario.

ƒ Desire for a Type 3 model⁷: In some instances, a fully integrated program model was preferred by the participating institutions. Some of the reasons for this were a) that a review of the available literature suggested it was the most effective model, b) that it would make it easier to draw on the strengths of all partners, c) that it enhanced continuity for the students; and/or d) that it provided an opportunity for faculty at each institution to teach in all years of the program.

2.3.2 The larger context

ƒ Available time: There was a very short window of time to develop the collaborative programs and to begin implementing them (between April, 2000 and September, 2001). By necessity, colleges and universities had to make quick decisions about how the program would be structured. There was limited time for relationship building and for developing a sense of joint ownership.

ƒ Available funding: Many of the colleges and universities had begun informal talks about collaborating, but none managed to begin collaborative programs without additional funding for both the development phase and the implementation.

Interviewees said that current funding levels did not cover the costs of collaboration (e.g., collaborative meetings and additional administration) or the costs of clinical education, both of which make the collaborative nursing programs more expensive than other degree programs.

ƒ Availability of qualified faculty: It was difficult for many of the institutions to attract qualified faculty, especially those with PhDs. This was due in part to the scarcity of nurses with graduate degrees in the province. The shortages seemed to be more acute in northern Ontario. In general, it was more difficult for colleges to recruit highly qualified faculty because of the limited emphasis on research in the college environment and because in at least some instances they offered lower pay than did universities for full time faculty.

ƒ Admission systems: In Ontario when this report was prepared, there were two separate admission systems for postsecondary education: one for the community

7 Type 3: all students proceed through the program together, with classes taught either at one site or at multiple sites

colleges and one for the universities. Students paid a processing fee to use each system. The two systems were not compatible with one another, which meant a lot of manual data entry if the collaborations were to have a shared admission process using both systems. Some collaborations had chosen to use only the university admission system, but interviewees from colleges were concerned that this would make the programs less accessible, that students would be less likely to consider other college programs, and/or that the colleges would be excluded from the admissions process.

ƒ Needs of the communities being served: Many of the colleges served smaller communities that were experiencing a shortage of nurses, especially in northern Ontario. There was a desire on the part of some of these colleges to provide nursing education to students within these communities, in part to increase accessibility to the students in the communities, and in part to increase the supply of nurses in those areas.

2.4 WHAT HAS WORKED WELL IN DEVELOPING AND DELIVERING