All-digital training course in neurophysiology: lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background The social distancing and suspension of on-campus learning, imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, are likely to influence medical training for months if not years. Thus, there is a need for digital replacement for classroom teaching, especially for hands-on courses, during which social distancing is hardly possible. Here, we investigated students’ learning experience with a newly designed digital training course in neurophysiology, with intercalated teaching blocks in either asynchronous (unsupervised online lectures and e-labs) or synchronous (online seminars, supervised by instructors) formats. Methods The accompanying anonymized prospective study included 146 student participants. At the beginning and the end of the course, students were invited to answer anonymous online questionnaires with 18 and 25 items, respectively. We conducted both qualitative analyses of students’ survey responses and statistical analyses of the results of cohort-specific summative examinations. The summative assessment results were compared both between 4 current cohorts and with the respective historical cohorts. Results Despite having little prior experience with e-learning (4.5 on the 1-7 scale), students adapted remarkably well to this online format. They appreciated its higher flexibility, time efficiency, student-oriented nature (especially when using inverted classroom settings), tolerance towards the individual learning style and family circumstances, and valued the ability to work through lectures and e-labs at their own learning speed. The major complaints concerned diminished social contacts with instructors and fellow students, the inability to ask questions as they occur, and the lack of sufficient technical expertise. The students valued the newly developed e-labs, especially the implementation of interactive preparative measures (PreLabs) and the intuitive lab design offered by the chosen software (Lt Platform from AD Instruments). The summative examinations at the end of the course documented the quality of knowledge transfer, which was comparable to that of previous classically instructed cohorts. Conclusion Despite the missing personal contact between the faculty and the students, inherent to online teaching, the all-digital training course described here proofed to be of good educational value and, in case the pandemic continues, is worse considering for the future. Some of the described building blocks, like digital lectures or interactive PreLabs, may survive the pandemics to enrich the medical education toolbox in the future.

Development and Evaluation of Interactive Flipped e-Learning (iFEEL) for Pharmacy Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Duszenko et al reported that some students faced technical difficulties and poor interaction between group members during online group work. Accordingly, 54% of students opposed the notion that online teamwork helped them understand the topic [ 11 ]. Furthermore, Kalmar et al found that students reported lowered productivity in group work and difficulty in receiving feedback from peers after switching to online education [ 43 ].…”

“…Although no significant difference was found, these findings confirm that the adopted e-course was at least as effective for content knowledge as our pre-COVID face-to-face course. Duszenko et al reported that none of the e-learning instructed students performed worse than their face-to-face instructed colleagues [ 11 ].…”

“…They reported successful course delivery with good learning outcomes, highlighting the merits of self-directed learning and flipped-classroom techniques. Duszenko et al implemented a flipped classroom model in a digital training course [ 11 ]. In this study, most students favored the flipped classroom format and 52% acknowledged that the flipped classroom was very helpful.…”

“…In this study, most students favored the flipped classroom format and 52% acknowledged that the flipped classroom was very helpful. The students preferred the simplistic explanations of their peers as opposed to instructor-led learning and perceived that this method enabled them to identify incomplete or misunderstood information [ 11 ]. Ketterer et al reported improved learning outcomes after implementing an online case-based curriculum in a flipped classroom design [ 7 ].…”

“…Moreover, it is important to explore which novel teaching modalities should be permanently anchored in online learning. The overall goal of this study was to obtain a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the newly developed iFEEL activity by students and teachers in terms of effectiveness, quality assurance, and in comparison with the previously delivered live courses [ 11 ].…”