Neuruppin, 24 October 2024
How can digital formats of instruction effectively support practical training for medical students? Two students at the Brandenburg Medical School Theodor Fontane (MHB) have addressed the issue and presented their findings to international congresses.
In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, e-learning has become increasingly important even for practical skills. The pandemic notably increased the significance of digital teaching formats in medicine. But which digital methods are best suited to practice-oriented student education? Digitization will be an essential element of professional medical activities in the future. How to integrate a digital curriculum into an existing educational program was an unresolved question which Lilly Vilsecker and Sebastian Weiss (photo, both 8th semester students) addressed in their doctoral projects. This summer they presented their studies to the annual meetings of the Society for Medical Education (GMA) in Fribourg (Switzerland) and the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) in Basel (Switzerland).
Lilly Vilsecker compared the effectivity of various formats of online and classroom learning: “The idea is to chart evidence of effectivity of online and classroom instruction methods for training in practical skills and identify formats that would make sense to be continued and developed further after the pandemic.” She also examined teaching formats already analyzed, differences between them, and factors which might explain the effectivity of different methods respectively.
Dr. Stefan Reinsch from the ZSAW-BB, the Brandenburg Center for Curricular Design and Educational Research, expects the doctoral project to contribute to advances in medical students’ practical training, primarily at the Brandenburg Medical School with its decentralized structures, and to serve as a basis for future research.
For Sebastian Weiss, the focus is on the challenge to integrate new subject matter – with digital competences as an example – into an existing curriculum: “We use an MHB-specific example case to explore obstacles that must be overcome in curricular design, and ways to handle them constructively.” His study monitors the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of medical and medical informatics students to implement a collaboration project in the curriculum as a pilot scheme; they fail in their first attempt. According to Dr. Julia Schendzielorz from the ZSAW-BB and co-supervisor of the two candidates, results will be used to consider, and react to, possible obstacles in the planning stage of curricula.
ZSAW-BB director Prof. Stefanie Oess as the first supervisor of the two doctoral projects points out that both research ideas originated from a scientific internship and were expanded subsequently.
Prof. Olaf Ahlers, co-director of the ZSAW-BB and holder of a professorship of research in health science education and evidence-based teaching methodology, acts as second supervisor for the two candidates. He believes the opportunity to present their findings at the international AMEE meeting was a decisive step in their research careers.
Conference delegates were particularly interested to learn how social interaction in digital settings can be improved to increase the learning success. Discussion among international participants revealed a need to explore in more detail not only the methodology but also strategies to implement digital content into medical curricula.
For further information on the doctoral projects see here, on the website of the Integrated Working Group for Educational Research.
