|
|
 |
About Continuing Education
What is the Difference Between Courses for Credit and Activities for Contact Hours?
Both credit and contact hour activities are continuing education opportunities for those who
wish to advance their knowledge, skills, and/or attitudes about nursing and health. They both
assume a basic level of preparation and expertise, hence, individuals are "continuing their
education." Neither is designed as an introduction to the profession of nursing or other
health related professions. Both, however, include activities that are introductory in nature
when that knowledge is either new to the field or an expansion of one's professional practice.
Consequently, continuing education activities can be both introductory or advanced in nature,
depending on the purpose of the activity. The following table outlines some of the differences
and similarities.
Credit Activity |
Contact Hour Activity |
Professional audience |
Professional audience |
Minimal degree requirements considered |
Licensure requirements considered |
Minimal learning time based on formula of one credit per 1500
minutes of in and out of class learning. |
Contact hours awarded based on formula of one contact hour per
50 minutes of direct contact learning time. |
Enhances knowledge, skills, and attitudes |
Enhances knowledge, skills, and attitudes |
Meets
WSU and OBR requirements |
Meets
ONA requirements |
Quality activity, faculty, & content |
Quality activity, faculty, & content |
Verification on WSU transcript |
Verification on certificate |
Requires
CoNH approval |
Requires
CoNH approval |
Evaluation by exam, paper or project. |
Evaluation by self, observation, exam or projec |
Contact hours cannot be awarded for a continuing education activity that meets basic
on-the-job requirements such as a job orientation or CPR renewal.
A credit course assumes that the learner will be involved in activities outside of the direct
activity. In other words, a graduate credit course requires 1500 minutes of work per credit
hour (combining both classroom and out-of-classroom activities) in comparison to the 50 minutes
of work per contact hour expected when contact hours are awarded. Contact hour activities do
not assume that the participant will be required to complete additional work outside of the
time allotted for the learning experience.
Because of the short course nature of many contact hour activities, it is not typical to expect
that the learner will complete papers, projects, or examinations as indicators of successfully
meeting the objectives. However, multiple measures of evaluation are encouraged when considering
the awarding of contact hours, if this is possible. Traditionally a difference is that credit
activities include instructor evaluation of student performance and contact hour activities
rely on participant self-evaluation of meeting objectives as a result of attending the activity.
However, both continuing education activities can use a full range of evaluation measures.
There should be no difference in continuing education activities in terms of quality of
presentation, quality of information presented, relevance to nursing or health, and quality of
instructional faculty.
|
