Changing face of medical education during a pandemic: tragedy or opportunity?

2021 ◽  
pp. postgradmedj-2021-140330
Author(s):  
Jean Mei Ching Leong ◽  
Wee Leon Lam ◽  
Shi Zhuan Tan ◽  
Chye Yew Ng

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed forever the way we do certain things. Although the race for a cure and vaccine has taken centre stage, traditional face-to-face medical education has slowly metamorphosised in the background to a virtual world with innumerable webinars, virtual tutorials and lectures in the World Wide Web. Despite this seemingly ‘perfect’ solution, there remains a hidden cost. Educators are forced to learn new skills to engage students as well as manipulate the electronic platform. Impact on learning for students, both undergraduate and postgraduate from a lack of social interactions, remains unknown. In this article, the authors share their experiences from different specialities about the pros and cons of virtual learning and teaching. Suggestions and practical tips are offered to enhance the learning experience. More emphasis may need to be placed on the creation of learning communities rather than lecture-based curricula. Hybrid curricula or conferences may become the future norm. As we slowly move out of lockdown into a changed world and new ways of doing things, lessons learnt can be harnessed for future hybrid models that can combine the best of technology and physical teaching to reduce worldwide inequalities.

2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Viktor Wang ◽  
Leslie Hitch ◽  
Geraldine Torrisi-Steele

Preparing graduates for the present and future workforce is an important strategic learning and teaching goal of higher education. Towards realizing this goal, institutions are expending significant effort promoting active learning as an institution-wide teaching approach. Active learning defined as learners deeply participating in the learning process are being increasingly used in face-to-face contexts, but can it be used just as effectively in the online environments now common in higher education? In their 2017 paper, the authors established that active learning online is certainly possible. In this current article the authors assert that not only is active learning online possible, but that it is a necessity to bolster workforce and higher order thinking skills needed in this current century. Importantly, the faculties have a crucial role to play in implementing active learning online, and active learning online permeate the whole of the online learning experience within courses.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-112
Author(s):  
Anrieta A. Karapetyan ◽  

No other media has become so popular in such a short period of time as online, which mainly serves for the purpose of communication. Online communications have the potential to fundamentally change the character of our social lives on all levels of social interactions. This article represents an attempt of discussing pros and cons of the online communication compared to the offline ones, and including functional as well as cultural components such as habits, usefulness, as well as specific cases affecting the gradual and immediate shift from the offline to the online communication (like COVID19 pandemic). Online communication spaces provide ample opportunities for selfrepresentation, convenience and compliance, easy connectivity from every place in the world, it is time-consuming and costly. It is widely used in all areas of everyday life. At the same time participants of online communication need nonverbal communication and those all-important social signals, which make communication more efficient. Despite the number of advantages, online communication still cannot completely replace the offline ones.


Author(s):  
Seda Khadimally

Today's learners are intrinsically motivated in that they are apt to analyze, synthesize, internalize, rebuild, share, and disseminate knowledge not only with their instructors, but also their peers, and the greater community, including a plethora of learning communities from across the world. Web-based technologies play a key role in this learning process. Particularly online social media networks and mobile technologies, the two selected technology trends evaluated in this paper, are thriving in online learning/teaching settings, immensely helping students acquire valid learning gains. These technologies are not a fad, a myth, or talk-of-the-day in learning and teaching environments in any given discipline. With that said, there are also certain issues and challenges that accompany these media and technologies for learning and teaching practices, which will also be addressed in this paper. Finally, future implications on these trends and issues in DL will be further discussed with the hope that educational leaders can draw on them for further inquiry and development in the field.


Author(s):  
Lizbeth Habib-Mireles ◽  
Mónica Zambrano-Garza ◽  
Neydi Gabriela Alfaro-Cázares

The COVID-19 crisis quickly led to the closure of educational institutions at all levels around the world, from one moment to another, millions of children and young people around the world were left without receiving their face-to-face classes, and many of them went through virtual classrooms framed in a phenomenon known as emergency remote teaching (ERT). This research sought to determine that well-designed and planned online learning experiences are significantly different from virtual courses offered online in response to this crisis, in order to identify what were the main areas of opportunity that learning in this emergency brought to teachers, students and educational institutions. A 12-item instrument was applied that was analyzed under a systematic random probability sampling, obtaining a sample of 49% of the population. The results made it possible to show the difficulties that arose, as well as the tools and platforms most used during the crisis in the institution of study in order to take advantage of knowledge to improve the learning experience of students.


Author(s):  
Chenicheri Sid Nair

The collection of stakeholder feedback has been gradually increasing in universities around the world. The most common practice is the use of surveys to evaluate student perceptions of their units (subjects), courses, programs and overall learning experience. The elements of a good quality system involve not only collecting evaluation information but making improvements based on it. This article gives an overview of the importance of student evaluations, the research supporting such feedback and a case study that illustrates how evaluation and improvement enhance the learning and teaching environment.


Author(s):  
Eric J. Dimmitt

In addition to providing strategies to build professional learning communities within an environment of adult learners, this chapter has the objective that adult learners will carry the principles of professional learning communities from their own learning experience back to their own learning organizations as both followers and leaders. In this way, and based upon the author's own experiences, the learning and teaching strategies described here have impact beyond the adult learning classroom by influencing how multiple type of organizations in the field of business, K12 and higher education, public service, and non-profits learn, collaborate, and achieve results.


2022 ◽  
pp. 247-268
Author(s):  
Lou Tolosa-Casadont

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 immediately exposed inequities among students and teachers in terms of technological access and pedagogical skill. Educators responded to this new reality by modifying their teaching and interactions with learners and by seeking opportunities for introspection, reflection, and transformation. The field of teacher education was also affected by the pandemic. This chapter presents the transformation of an in-school face-to-face pre-clinical language teaching and learning experience at the elementary school level into an innovative virtual hands-on online one-on-one language pre-clinical teaching and learning experience. It also includes how teacher candidates (TCs) participating in this program designed and taught highly engaging multimodal virtual lessons, the pros and cons of teaching in this type of setting, and the lessons learned though this experience.


Author(s):  
Seda Khadimally

Today's learners are intrinsically motivated in that they are apt to analyze, synthesize, internalize, rebuild, share, and disseminate knowledge not only with their instructors, but also their peers, and the greater community, including a plethora of learning communities from across the world. Web-based technologies play a key role in this learning process. Particularly online social media networks and mobile technologies, the two selected technology trends evaluated in this paper, are thriving in online learning/teaching settings, immensely helping students acquire valid learning gains. These technologies are not a fad, a myth, or talk-of-the-day in learning and teaching environments in any given discipline. With that said, there are also certain issues and challenges that accompany these media and technologies for learning and teaching practices, which will also be addressed in this paper. Finally, future implications on these trends and issues in DL will be further discussed with the hope that educational leaders can draw on them for further inquiry and development in the field.


2011 ◽  
pp. 1430-1436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Athina A. Lazakidou ◽  
Christina Ilioudi ◽  
Andriani Daskalaki

Computer-based learning has been developed for the beginning medical student and the experienced practitioner, for the lay person and the medical expert. There are many advantages to online and computer-based learning when compared to traditional face-to-face courses and lectures. Information technologies are providing new opportunities for linking medical schools around the world for sharing computer-based learning materials. In this chapter, the authors present examples of actual programs that are being used to support medical education for each of these categories of learners.


2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Gross

Studying abroad can be a life-altering experience, but not necessarily. I credit the two study-abroad experiences I had as an undergraduate as setting my course as an anthropologist. At this stage in my career, having directed, taught and evaluated five study-abroad programmes in three different countries, I felt ready to create my own based on the pros and cons I had observed. In December 2013, I completed a pilot run of a binational learning community focused on food, culture and social justice in Ecuador and Oregon and would like to share the experience in order to encourage other higher education teachers to invent similar programmes. It is not an easy model to pull off, especially in a large state institution, but it achieved the kind of coherence that I have found lacking in other study-abroad programmes and was a very satisfying teaching/learning experience. I will outline some issues concerning study-abroad programmes and then describethe programme I was involved in implementing in 2013.


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