Remote online global health education among U.S. medical students during COVID-19 and beyond

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Abstract

Background

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 Harvard Medical School course Clinical Topics in Global Health was offered for the first time as a remote class. We sought to understand student and faculty perceptions of the elective and evaluate the perceived effectiveness of teaching global health using an online education platform.

Methods

Following the course, students and faculty were invited to complete a combined total of three online surveys, which consisted of closed- and open-response questions assessing the strengths and challenges of online learning. Data analyses included traditional descriptive statistics, Net Promoter Score calculation, and inductive thematic analysis of qualitative data.

Results

Thirty-two students and eighteen guest faculty (including four international faculty) participated in the course. Highly-rated course components included guest lecturers, practical skill sessions, polls, and case studies. The Net Promoter Score for the course was excellent at 92, and students reported a greater likelihood of pursuing a career in global health because of the course. While students and faculty highlighted limitations of the remote learning platform (lack of community and interactivity), they also commented on increased accessibility and faculty diversity. Most faculty and students recommended a hybrid model for future versions of the course and suggested strategies to address current limitations.

Conclusions

A remote learning platform can effectively deliver global health education, both in the pandemic setting and beyond.

Supplementary information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03434-3.

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Most cited references 38

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Online Learning: A Panacea in the Time of COVID-19 Crisis

Shivangi Dhawan (2020)

Educational institutions (schools, colleges, and universities) in India are currently based only on traditional methods of learning, that is, they follow the traditional set up of face-to-face lectures in a classroom. Although many academic units have also started blended learning, still a lot of them are stuck with old procedures. The sudden outbreak of a deadly disease called Covid-19 caused by a Corona Virus (SARS-CoV-2) shook the entire world. The World Health Organization declared it as a pandemic. This situation challenged the education system across the world and forced educators to shift to an online mode of teaching overnight. Many academic institutions that were earlier reluctant to change their traditional pedagogical approach had no option but to shift entirely to online teaching–learning. The article includes the importance of online learning and Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Challenges (SWOC) analysis of e-learning modes in the time of crisis. This article also put some light on the growth of EdTech Start-ups during the time of pandemic and natural disasters and includes suggestions for academic institutions of how to deal with challenges associated with online learning.

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Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education

D.Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson, David Walter Archer (1999)

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Online eLearning for undergraduates in health professions: A systematic review of the impact on knowledge, skills, attitudes and satisfaction

Pradeep Paul George, Nikos Papachristou, José Marcano Belisario … (2014)

Background Health systems worldwide are facing shortages in health professional workforce. Several studies have demonstrated the direct correlation between the availability of health workers, coverage of health services, and population health outcomes. To address this shortage, online eLearning is increasingly being adopted in health professionals’ education. To inform policy–making, in online eLearning, we need to determine its effectiveness. Methods We performed a systematic review of the effectiveness of online eLearning through a comprehensive search of the major databases for randomised controlled trials that compared online eLearning to traditional learning or alternative learning methods. The search period was from January 2000 to August 2013. We included articles which primarily focused on students' knowledge, skills, satisfaction and attitudes toward eLearning and cost-effectiveness and adverse effects as secondary outcomes. Two reviewers independently extracted data from the included studies. Due to significant heterogeneity among the included studies, we presented our results as a narrative synthesis. Findings Fifty–nine studies, including 6750 students enrolled in medicine, dentistry, nursing, physical therapy and pharmacy studies, met the inclusion criteria. Twelve of the 50 studies testing knowledge gains found significantly higher gains in the online eLearning intervention groups compared to traditional learning, whereas 27 did not detect significant differences or found mixed results. Eleven studies did not test for differences. Six studies detected significantly higher skill gains in the online eLearning intervention groups, whilst 3 other studies testing skill gains did not detect differences between groups and 1 study showed mixed results. Twelve studies tested students' attitudes, of which 8 studies showed no differences in attitudes or preferences for online eLearning. Students' satisfaction was measured in 29 studies, 4 studies showed higher satisfaction for online eLearning and 20 studies showed no difference in satisfaction between online eLearning and traditional learning. Risk of bias was high for several of the included studies. Conclusion The current evidence base suggests that online eLearning is equivalent, possibly superior to traditional learning. These findings present a potential incentive for policy makers to cautiously encourage its adoption, while respecting the heterogeneity among the studies.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Brett D. Nelson:

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5049-1798

bnelson1@mgh.harvard.edu

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med Educ

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med Educ

Title: BMC Medical Education

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6920

Publication date (Electronic): 10 May 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 10 May 2022

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 22

Electronic Location Identifier: 353

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.32224.35, ISNI 0000 0004 0386 9924, Division of Global Health, Department of Pediatrics, , Massachusetts General Hospital, ; Boston, MA USA

[2 ]GRID grid.38142.3c, ISNI 000000041936754X, Harvard Medical School, ; Boston, MA USA

[3 ]GRID grid.32224.35, ISNI 0000 0004 0386 9924, Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, , Massachusetts General Hospital, ; 125 Nashua St Suite 8426, MB Boston, USA

Author information

Peter P. Moschovis https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9664-5959

Anupama Dinesh https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7678-548X

Brett D. Nelson https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5049-1798

Article

Publisher ID: 3434

DOI: 10.1186/s12909-022-03434-3

PMC ID: 9087168

PubMed ID: 35538485

SO-VID: 78fc4eeb-0cdc-4e72-889f-933976903ce9

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 8 December 2021

Date accepted : 3 May 2022

Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000002, National Institutes of Health;

Award ID: K23ES030399 (PI: Peter Moschovis)

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Education

Keywords: global health,remote learning,clinical skills,covid-19 pandemic

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Education

Keywords: global health, remote learning, clinical skills, covid-19 pandemic

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Remote online global health education among U.S. medical students during COVID-19 and beyond

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Abstract

Background

Methods

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Conclusions

Supplementary information

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Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 38

Online Learning: A Panacea in the Time of COVID-19 Crisis

Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education

Online eLearning for undergraduates in health professions: A systematic review of the impact on knowledge, skills, attitudes and satisfaction

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