The University of West Florida Rankings by Salary Score

The Nurse Practitioner program at The University of West Florida is online and self-taught. There were essentially no powerpoint slides, no lectures, no topics overview, no study review, no knowledge points to bring focus to the readings. The textbooks readings were not helpful for the details in the questions on the quizzes and exams. It was also full time and required a lot of hours involved. But those hours were primarily spent in participating in discussion questions. For example you might have had 2 courses... Read More at a time in a semester and each course you were preparing to learn the material but you were also spending time reading posts, responding to posts, and reading scholarly articles to support those posts; you have to spread posts out over the posting period (approx. a week) to hopefully produce quality in depth discussion (which was questionably accomplished at best). However, the time spent on posts averaged 1.5-3 hours per post for a single class for a minimum of 3 days per week about 6-9 hours on posts alone per week and barely some of that time helps with understanding the reading material. Essentially, the posts felt more like busy work and did not seem very efficient or helpful when you could have a virtual meeting at variable times offered and discuss the topics real time and have some guided discussion in a fraction of the time spent trying to make asynchronous posts. Now for studying topics such as assessment, Maternal-child, pharmacology, etc- there were no powerpoints provided and if they were, it was likely the powerpoint supplied with the instructor version of the textbook which had basic one-three word comments with no depth. It is hard to extrapolate points of focus from that. In my assessment, ambiguity and no focus or true facilitation may be effective, to some degree, for a master's level theory degree, however, it is far from effective for a master's level applied science degree that requires expounding on knowledge points. I would think coursework would reflect a smaller portion of time on theory and more time on integrating science application and scenarios that specifically help with applied principles of evidence-based practice for the various medical conditions. Therefoe, unless you plan to attend a program just to self-study through the NP degree to be eligible to sit for your boards, please be sure to ask the educators at this school and others plenty of deliberate and explicit questions about the teaching methods, assessment methods, and student expectations before applying or enrolling. Maybe even request to shadow a student in the online course or something. I don't think online means no clarity and purposefully guided instruction, neither does master's level. Other that the above comments, everyone speaks nicely and interacts nicely and they're courteous. But nice is not helpful when you need Master's level education in nurse practitioner studies. Good Luck.

If you attend UWF at either undergraduate or graduate level, you will gain only what you actively pursue beyond sitting through powerpoint-laden lectures and basic lab exercises. I was lucky in realizing this at an early stage of my time served there, and so I was able to find ways to access extracurricular experiences (research opportunities, to be specific) to make myself marketable. While attending courses in the EES department at UWF, I have a particularly unsavory memory of being chastised and dismissed... Read More by an actual professor for using the term "sustainable" in a discussion about impacts of industry. This is one of several rather unpleasant memories. Do with that what you will.