Medical Education Department, Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt.
Ibn Sina National College, Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
BMC Med Educ. 2021 Jun 10;21(1):339. doi: 10.1186/s12909-021-02752-2.
With the strike of Covid-19, an unprecedented rapid shift to remote learning happened worldwide with a paradigm shift to online learning from an institutional adjuvant luxury package and learner choice into a forced solo choice. This raises the question of quality assurance. While some groups have already established standards for online courses, teaching and programs yet very little information is included on methodology of their development and very little emphasis is placed on the online learning experience. Nevertheless, no work has been done specifically for medical education institutions.
To develop a set of descriptors for best practice in online learning in medical education utilizing existing expertise and needs.
This work utilizes a qualitative multistage approach to identify the descriptors of best practice in online learning starting with a question guided focus group, thematic analysis, Delphi technique and an expert consensus session done simultaneously for triangulation. This was done involving 32 institution in 19 countries.
This materialized into the development of a set of standards, indicators, and development of a checklist for each standard area. The standard areas identified were organizational capacity, educational effectiveness, and human resources each of which listed a number of standards. Expert consensus sessions identified the need for qualification of data and thus the development of indicators for best practice.
Standards are needed for online learning experience and their development and redesign is situational and needs to be enhanced methodologically in axes that are pertaining to the needs of the education community. Taking such axes into consideration by educators and institutions will lead to planning and implementing successful online learning activities, while taking them into consideration by the evaluators will help them conduct comprehensive audits and provide stakeholders with highly informative evaluation reports.
随着新冠疫情的爆发，全球范围内前所未有地迅速转向远程学习，将在线学习从机构辅助的奢侈品和学习者选择转变为强制性的个人选择，这引发了质量保证的问题。虽然一些团体已经为在线课程、教学和项目制定了标准，但很少有信息涉及它们的开发方法，也很少强调在线学习体验。然而，针对医学教育机构，还没有专门的工作。
利用现有专业知识和需求，为医学教育中的在线学习制定最佳实践的一套描述符。
这项工作采用定性多阶段方法，从问题导向的焦点小组开始，进行主题分析、德尔菲技术和专家共识会议，同时进行三角剖分，以确定在线学习最佳实践的描述符。这项工作涉及 19 个国家的 32 个机构。
这导致制定了一套标准、指标，并为每个标准领域制定了检查表。确定的标准领域包括组织能力、教育效果和人力资源，每个领域都列出了一些标准。专家共识会议确定了对数据进行资格认证的必要性，因此为最佳实践制定了指标。
在线学习体验需要标准，其开发和重新设计具有情境性，并且需要在与教育界需求相关的轴向上进行方法学增强。教育工作者和机构考虑这些轴将有助于规划和实施成功的在线学习活动，而评估者考虑这些轴将有助于他们进行全面的审计，并为利益相关者提供信息丰富的评估报告。
