Chan Alex, Cao Andrew, Kim Leanne, Gui Shannon, Ahuja Manan, Kamhawy Rana, Latchupatula Lekhini
Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada.
Can Med Educ J. 2021 Sep 14;12(4):65-69. doi: 10.36834/cmej.71975. eCollection 2021 Sep.
Though prior literature has shown that virtual conferences improve accessibility and provide a comparable educational experience, further research is required to characterize their educational value.
In this repeated cross-sectional study, demographic and survey data were compared between attendance perspectives for the in-person student-led internal medicine conference held in 2019 and subsequent virtual conference held in 2020.
There were 146 attendees at the in-person conference and 200 attendees at the online conference, in which 32 (22% response rate) and 52 responses (26% response rate) were gathered, respectively. Comparison of Likert Scale data via Mann-Whitney U Test revealed that learning objectives were better met in-person for the overall conference ( < 0.01) and didactic sessions ( < .05), but not for workshops, in which there was no significant difference. Survey takers noted the virtual conference to be more accessible on multiple factors, but felt as though their potential for interaction with other participants was more limited.
Results indicate that though the virtual conference appeared more accessible to attendees, overall learning objectives for the conference and didactic sessions were better met in-person. Interestingly however, there was no observed difference in perceived educational value for small group workshops.
尽管先前的文献表明虚拟会议提高了可及性并提供了类似的教育体验，但仍需要进一步研究来描述其教育价值。
在这项重复横断面研究中，对2019年举行的由学生主导的线下内科会议和随后2020年举行的虚拟会议的参会者视角下的人口统计学和调查数据进行了比较。
线下会议有146名参会者，线上会议有200名参会者，分别收集到32份（回复率22%）和52份回复（回复率26%）。通过曼-惠特尼U检验对李克特量表数据进行比较，结果显示，对于整个会议（<0.01）和教学环节（<0.05），线下会议能更好地达成学习目标，但工作坊环节并非如此，二者没有显著差异。调查对象指出，虚拟会议在多个方面更易参与，但感觉自己与其他参与者互动的可能性更有限。
结果表明，尽管虚拟会议对参会者来说似乎更易参与，但会议及教学环节的总体学习目标在线下会议中能得到更好的实现。然而，有趣的是，在小组工作坊的感知教育价值方面未观察到差异。
