Developing social presence in online learning among nurses: Exploration of the community of inquiry models domain of social using a qualitative descriptive design.

There is marked increase in the demand for online learning in nursing curriculums. However, online learning has been criticised for being detached and impersonal resulting in low levels of engagement. In a world that is rapidly shifting to online learning as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic creating quality online learning environments has become more pressing. The Community of Inquiry (COI) is a well-established model used to frame online environments in many disciplines including nursing. The COI model proposes that social, cognitive and teacher presences must exist in the online learning space for learning to occur. It is argued that social presence remains less understood despite being one of the essential elements. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to understand how facilitators and participants engage with and use a social presence in an online seminar. It is concluded that when facilitators include the use of a social presence in the design of the online learning space in-depth engagement with online content also increases. This can happen rapidly (less than an hour) and continue for several weeks. It is deduced that a social presence enhances a sense of realness among participants of online learning and through an increased sense realness engagement increases.

Testing of the 4SM Method in the Gulf of California Suggests Field Data Are not Needed to Derive Satellite Bathymetry.

Satellite-derived bathymetry methods over coastal areas were developed to deliver basic and useful bathymetry information. However, the process is not straightforward, the main limitation being the need for field data. The Self-calibrated Spectral Supervised Shallow-water Modeler (4SM) method was tested to obtain coastal bathymetry without the use of any field data. Using Landsat-8 multispectral images from 2013 to 2016, a bathymetric time series was produced. Groundtruthed depths and an alternative method, Stumpf's Band Ratio Algorithm, were used to verify the results. Retrieved (4SM) vs groundtruthed depths scored an average r² (0.90), and a low error (RMSE = 1.47 m). 4SM also showed, over the whole time series, the same average accuracy of the control method (40%). Advantages, limitations and operability under complex atmosphere and water column conditions, and high and low-albedo bottom processing capabilities of 4SM are discussed. In conclusion, the findings suggest that 4SM is as accurate as the commonly used Stumpf's method, the only difference being the independence of 4SM from previous field data, and the potential to deliver bottom spectral characteristics for further modeling. 4SM thus represents a significant advance in coastal remote sensing potential to obtain bathymetry and optical properties of the marine bottom.