COVID-19: a catalyst for the digitization of surgical teaching at a German University Hospital

Abstract

Background The summer semester 2020, had to be restructured due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the associated contact restrictions. Here, for the first time, the established lectures in lecture halls and small group seminars could not be conducted in presence as usual. A possible tool for the implementation of medical teaching, offers the use of eLearning, online webinars and learning platforms. At present it is unclear how the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic will affect surgical teaching, how digitization will be accepted by students, and how virtual teaching can be expanded in the future. Methods The teaching, which was previously delivered purely through face-to-face lectures, was completely converted to digital media. For this purpose, all lectures were recorded and were available to students on demand. The seminars were held as a twice a week occurring online webinar. The block internship was also conducted as a daily online webinar and concluded with an online exam at the end. At the end of the semester, a survey of the students was carried out, which was answered by n = 192 students with an anonymized questionnaire. The questionnaire inquires about the previous and current experience with eLearning, as well as the possibility of a further development towards a purely digital university. Results There were n = 192 students in the study population. For 88%, the conversion of classes to web-based lectures represented their first eLearning experience. For 77% of all students, the digitization of teaching led to a change in the way they prepare for class. 73% of the participating students are of the opinion that eLearning lectures should continue to be offered. 54% of the students felt that eLearning lectures made more sense than face-to-face lectures. A purely virtual university could be imagined by 41% of the students. Conclusion The conversion of teaching represented the first contact with eLearning for most students. Overall, the eLearning offering was experienced as positive. Due to the new teaching structure, the way of learning had already changed during the semester. Based on the new eLearning content, the already existing formats can be further expanded in the future. Nevertheless, it turned out that the practical-surgical contents and skills cannot be adequately represented by purely online offers; for this, the development of hybrid practice-oriented teaching concepts is necessary.

Distance Education for Basic Surgical Skills Using Homemade Tools—DIY Methods for Emergency Situations

“…The pandemic has forced most universities around the world to-all of a sudden-switch to distance education, with extremely limited preparation possibilities and resources. The sudden change made it impossible to hold contact hours or to send the necessary equipment for the students to practice at home [9][10][11][12]. Although the pandemic catalyzed this process, we believe the lessons learned and the newly developed methodologies could be applied for further emergency situations, resource-limited settings, or even in the regular curriculum.…”

Struggle in the bubble - a prospective study on the effect of remote learning and distance education on confidence in practical surgical skills acquired during COVID-19

“…Notwithstanding, online communication platforms have provided an important approach to continue medical education. While lectures or interactive seminars can be easily delivered online, it has been challenging to conduct surgical training (requiring a high level of teacher–student interactions) online or via pre-recorded videos [ 14 – 17 , 28 ]. Although, scattered studies reported feasibility of online teaching for practical surgical skills, video-based education constitutes a passive learning mode and will not be able to substitute hands-on courses [ 15 – 17 ].…”

“…Moreover, a current publication by Kofoed et al illustrated that performance of students randomly assigned to an online introductory economic class was lower than their peers who participated in in-person courses [ 13 ]. Furthermore, a recent German survey of medical students investigating the effects of e-learning for teaching surgical skills emphasized that practical surgical competencies cannot be adequately represented by online offers [ 14 ]. Notwithstanding, online teaching of basic surgical skills emerged to be effective and therefore shows potential to overcome the limits imposed by the COVID-19 crisis.…”

Virtualization Development Trends: Scoping Review

“…Almost 25% of the studies focus on the development of virtualization in education (n=32). This trend seems natural given that educational institutions often manifest the extensive advantages of employing virtual computing (Wolf et al, 2022;Xu et al, 2022;Yee et al, 2022). Slightly over 20% of the studies target virtualization in the field of machine learning (n=27).…”