The COVID-19 era of uncertainty has led to unprecedented disruptions in every sphere of life. The world of education has not been spared. Governments and educationists have been doing their optimum to find ways around the issues brought about an unknown virus that completely took scientists by surprise. It is obvious that life as we know it is unlikely to ever be the same. Neither is the training and education of medical professionals likely remain as it was before the emergence of COVID-19. Though the pandemic is a disruption, it has also afforded an opportunity to find other novel ways of doing things. With more and more people working from home, new ways are being found to deal with commerce and business.
Undergraduate and graduate medical education have been significantly disrupted, and thus compelled educators and learners to adjust to learning at a distance while aiming for some form of normality. Lecturers and other academicians have had to adjust their teaching modules to suit advanced electronic platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting application, and a lot more. The distance education platforms such as virtual conferences, webinars, social media, etc., have made continuing medical education possible during the lockdown.
With the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, and the recommendation of social distancing by the WHO, large gatherings of people have been prohibited and all educational activities including medical conferences, seminars, workshops, etc. have been suspended. Many educational institutions have been closed. This unusual situation has become a catalyst for the remodeling of medical education that has been in progress in the last few years.
Consequently, distance education (e-learning) has begun as a new method of teaching. Online/virtual events like webinars have emerged to maintain continuity of medical education during this pandemic. The webinar using virtual applications such as Zoom will be of great benefit if an escalation of the numbers who contract COVID-19 is to be avoided.
The Department of Medical Education of Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (IAU) has organized a series of Live Webinars 2020 with multiple platforms that would provide different topics essential for all learners and educators. This series of lectures offer unique learning opportunities for learners and educators especially those who may need to work in areas outside their comfort zone. The Department of Medical Education of IAU believes that the most efficient way to adjust to this ‘new normal’ would be to amalgamate the use of the internet with the traditional learning methods to provide the best of medical education. The Department of Medical Education is aware that medicine is a field that requires constant updating of knowledge in order to provide optimum health care to patients. Online education platforms such as webinar will give unique opportunities to both educators and students for interaction and thereby mitigate the effects of physical and social distancing. The invited speakers will be mostly international experts and well-known educationists. It is expected that the knowledge and expertise of our international educators will enhance the learning and teaching strategies of our students and local educators.
Webinar 1: “Conceptualizing the Future of Medical Education”
Speaker: Olle Ten Cate
Olle ten Cate is a professor of medical education at University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands. He has a background of undergraduate medical training and a Ph.D. in social sciences. He has vast experience with curriculum innovation, educational research, and faculty development in the health professions domain, locally, nationally, and internationally. He was the founding director of the Center for Research and Development of Education at UMC Utrecht from 2005 to 2017, served as the president of the Netherlands Association for Medical Education from 2006 to 2012, and has published (450+) and presented (500+) widely about advances in health professions education. He has successfully mentored 22 doctoral students for a Ph.D. in health professions education and currently supervises 10 candidates. For his work, he received several awards, among which the J.P. Hubbard award of NBME, the international Ian R. Hart award for innovation in medical education, and the Han Moll medal for lifetime contributions to Dutch medical education. One of his interests is competency-based education in the health professions, and specifically in the application of entrustable professional activities, to improve education to serve the quality and safety of health care practice.
In this webinar, the following sub-themes were discussed:
- History of medical education since 1910 and Flexner’s report to 2020
- Future of medical education and competency-based education
- Entrustable professional activities and its value in training, specialization and assessment
- How EPA’s revolutionized the medical education
Webinar 2: “Open Book Exams”
Speaker: Rehan Khan
Sub-themes:
- Constructing items for open book exams
- Value of open exams during COVID 19 lock-down period
- The educational impact of open-book exams
- Reliability, validity acceptability, and cost-effectiveness of open-book exams
- Are all exams in the future open book?
Webinar 3: “Clinical teaching at a time of physical distancing”
Speaker: Deborah Gill
Deborah Gill qualified in medicine in 1990 from The Middlesex Hospital Medical School and was trained as a general practitioner. She began her academic career at Barts and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry as an academic fellow in primary care and joined the Royal Free Medical School as a Lecturer in the Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences in 1996. She also joined the Academic Centre for Medical Education in 2002 as a Senior Lecturer in Medical Education and became Deputy Director of UCL Medical School in 2010. Deborah was appointed as Interim Director in the summer of 2014 and to the substantive post in April 2015 when she was also appointed as Chair of Medical Education. She joined the Office of the Vice Provost Education and Student Affairs as Pro-Vice Provost, Student Experience in January 2019. Deborah is a professor of Medical Education and Director of UCL Medical School and an active teacher and education scholar.
Her education research is focused on the following areas:
1. Professionalism and professional formation
2. The support of novices in clinical learning environments
3. Peer-assisted learning
4. Educator development
She is a Doctor of Education (EdD) as well as a doctor of medicine. Her research focused on the factors impacting on the professional identity formation of novice doctors.
In this webinar, the following were the sub-themes:
- Look at the global landscape of disruption and early adaptation to learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
- Revisit the purpose of clinical teaching and clinical placements in the education of doctors
- Identify what is missing or problematic in our temporary operating model
- Identify what has been gained in our new ways of working and learning and the lessons learned.
- Formulate principles to ensure safe and effective clinical learning as the pandemic continues and to ensure agile responses to future emergencies
- Consider the future into which the “COVID-19 generation” of doctors will work and learn
Webinar 4: “Technology-assisted learning and assessment”
Speaker: Colin Greengrass
Colin Greengrass, B.Sc (Hons), M.Sc., Ph.D., DipHPE is the Academic Director for Technology Enhanced Learning and Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Medical University of Bahrain (RCSI-MUB). In this position, he has been responsible for transforming the preclinical and clinical curriculum and related educational activities, into online and blended learning programs. This has focused primarily upon the use of a HyFlex model with a structure aimed to maximize student engagement.
He is a former head of medical education departments at King Faisal University and Al-Farabi Medical College in Saudi Arabia. He was also a founding member of the Imam Saud University Medical College in Riyadh, heading their curriculum development committee. He has conducted workshops in curriculum mapping and on many aspects of medical education internationally, including pre-conference workshops at AMEE 2018 and 2019.
Dr. Greengrass holds a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the National University of Singapore, and a Masters in neuroscience from King’s College, London.
Dr. Greengrass has research interests in numerous areas of education including the use of technology in learning and assessment, unraveling cognitive and metacognitive processes, methods of assessment in collaborative learning environments, optimizing the incorporation of memory encoding principles into teaching and eLearning systems, and how a curriculum can be designed in alignment with principles and structures underlying cognitive architecture.
Sub-themes:
- How technology helped during COVID 19 pandemic lockdown and distance learning
- TAL was always there how is it different now?
- Examples of applications and software that can be easily applied to engage students
- Use of technology to ensure reliable distance assessment of knowledge, skills and competencies.
Webinar 5: “Future of Performance Bases Assessment”
Speaker: Katharine Bouriscot
Katharine Boursicot BSc MBBS MRCOG MAHPE NTF SFHEA FRSM, Associate Dean, Assessment & Progression, Duke-NUS Medical School, graduated from the University of London with an Honors BSc in Anatomy and MBBS from the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital and went on train in Obstetrics and Gynecology in London, Dublin and Hong Kong then worked as a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynecologist at St Thomas' and St Bartholomew's and Homerton Hospitals in London for eight years, with an Honorary Senior Lecturer position at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.
With an increasing interest in medical education, Katharine studied at the Institute of Education in London and was awarded a distinction in her Masters in Higher and Professional Education. As a full-time medical educationalist has gained experience and expertise in medical education and have led the reform of assessment at the undergraduate medical schools at Bart's and the London, Cambridge University, and the St George's University of London. In 2007, Katharine was awarded a UK Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship, in recognition for her influence in raising standards and dissemination of evidence-based good practice in medical education in the UK and internationally.
In this webinar, the following were the sub-themes:
- Ottawa consensus statement included many issues related to the assessment of the performance of medical students
- How can performance be assessed during COVID 19 physical distancing with different levels of distancing
- How can we have a reliable assessment of performance at a distance?
- Logistics of online OSCE’s experience in Singapore
