Does Online Teaching Work?
An Evidence Based Reflection
Not to sound cliché but COVID19 really has changed lots of things in the world. I mean, the clinical world has certainly transformed. I was in my first year of lecturing on a physician assistant course at a UK university when the pandemic hit and it turned everything upside down. Suddenly I found myself going from doing face to face seminars and tutorials to pre-recording lectures so students could listen to them. Zoom and MS Teams were still a working progress at the time and I found myself sitting in front of a mirror recording myself to keep myself engaged!
At the start, I absolutely despised online teaching. Most of my students had their webcams and mics off and I felt I was speaking to a black screen most of the time. It was tough. Looking back at now though, perhaps I was being petty and simply not keeping up with technology? Certainly now I’m more comfortable with online education whether as a teacher or as a learner. When we were asked to revert to pre-pandemic teaching methods, I noticed more people working from home, empty desks and had even forgotten some people existed (I joke)!
Clinical education has since retained some of the changes during the pandemic. Most lectures are now streamed online with lecturers and students being able to interact from home. Software has evolved to enable creativity in teaching methods including breakout rooms and poll functionality. There is a mixed consensus as to what people prefer but certainly for those coming into university now, learning remotely has become normal.
It was always assumed there would be challenges. Clinical learning isn’t like other forms of learning as it is practical as well as being academic. It’s a translational discipline and teaching somebody how to do a certain skill via a computer is always going to be quite tough. I mean, that’s the assumption. Clinical providers have been offering a wide range of courses online including detailed surgical skills courses via the Royal College of Surgeons. Multiple cameras are attached to enhance views of surgery taking place and the expectation is that learners can take the skills and apply them under supervision in practice. Clinical teaching is long term, experienced based and therefore, online technology can be used to facilitate this.
So how effective is online learning? Studies in this area are very new but the trends are quite surprising. For example, a small study involving 43 students in South Korea were given OSCE teaching exclusively online. When compared to the cohort who received their teaching face to face, the cohort who received online teaching achieved higher OSCE scores in face to face OSCE examination. In another study involving 105 medical students split in three groups who were sitting different specialty exams were given a questionnaire after sitting an exclusively online OSCE. Whilst only 45.9% of students felt online OSCEs were close to the real examination, 93.4% agreed it was a good substitute. Another study which involved 298 students, with a response rate of 77% concluded there being no difference in knowledge gain between online and face to face education. Finally, a systematic review which evaluated 19 papers on online learning versus face to face learning also concluded there being no difference in the quality of teaching and learning.
None of these studies are particularly robust by themselves but as a collective they suggest two things. The first is that online medical education is becoming adopted in all fields of healthcare and there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that online, didactic teaching can be just as effective online. As for OSCEs, interviews and VIVAs which were traditionally done face to face, certain aspects of these exams can certainly be reproduced with equal effectiveness such as communication skills.
For a long time, we at Pareto resisted going online. We weren’t convinced. We’ve always loved doing face to face teaching which is why we would rather travel to universities to deliver lectures including Edge Hill, Manchester and Lancaster. However, after evaluating some of the emerging experience as well as our own experiences we launched our webinars. We do have an upcoming written exam course for PAs so do check it out!
Based on the same thinking, our experiences teaching communication skills practice online encouraged us to launch an online OSCE Masterclass. This aims to go through clinical scenarios, specifically focusing on history taking skills with PAs due to sit their national exams. If you’re due to sit your nationals and need some practice, then book here!
So we will certainly be launching more online content whilst keeping some of our flagship face to face content so keep an eye out!