A virtual nursing honor society: Recognition for online academic excellence

Abstract

The growth of online education has created a challenge to academic institutions, faculty, and professional honor societies with the desire to capture those students who excel in their field and retain institutional affiliation from a distance. A private university nursing program decided to meet this challenge by creating a virtual Nursing Honor Society (vNHS) for academically superior students from their RN-BSN, MSN, and DNP online programs. The process began with a task force of faculty members to develop an infrastructure that would support a student organization within a larger university academic system. This article presents the pre-planning process, the website design, the process of conducting virtual induction ceremonies, and committee structure for virtual events that established the vNHS. Challenges and lessons learned are presented to promote replication in other academic institutions that offer online programming. The vNHS has been beneficial for students and the larger University.