Department of Public Health, Kenya Medical Training College, Nairobi, Kenya.
Department of Clinical Medicine, Kenya Medical Training College, Nairobi, Kenya.
BMC Med Educ. 2021 Dec 11;21(1):612. doi: 10.1186/s12909-021-03050-7.
E-learning has been widely adopted as a teaching and learning approach in medical education internationally. However, its adoption in low- and middle-income countries is still at an infantile stage. The use of e-learning may help to overcome some of the barriers to access to quality education and provide flexible, low-cost, user-centred, and easily updated learning. To address the need for research education during the COVID-19 pandemic, we developed and implemented an e-learning course for students enrolled in higher diploma courses at the Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC). In this paper, we report our experience teaching the online research course in resource-constrained settings to enable other medical educators, students and institutions in similar settings to understand the most appropriate approaches to incorporating e-learning interventions.
This was a cross-sectional study that reviewed the experiences of learners and lecturers on a research course at Kenya Medical Training College. All higher diploma students admitted to the college in the 2020/21 academic year were invited to take part in the study. We also included all lecturers that were involved in the coordination and facilitation of the course. We analysed qualitative and quantitative data that were collected from the e-learning platform, an online course-evaluation form and reports from course lecturers.
We enrolled 933 students on the online research course. These students had joined 44 higher diploma courses in 11 campuses of the college. The students struggled to complete synchronous e-learning activities on the e-learning platform. Only 53 and 45% of the students were able to complete the pretest and the posttest, respectively. Four themes were identified through a thematic analysis of qualitative data (1) Students gained research competencies (2) Students appreciated the use of diverse e-learning technologies (3) Students felt overwhelmed by the research course (4) Technological challenges reduce the effectiveness of online learning.
Our results suggest that e-learning can be used to teach complex courses, such as research in resource-constrained settings. However, faculty should include more asynchronous e-learning activities to enhance teaching and learning and improve student experiences.
电子学习已在国际医学教育中被广泛采用作为一种教学和学习方法。然而，在中低收入国家，它的采用仍处于起步阶段。电子学习的使用可能有助于克服获得高质量教育的一些障碍，并提供灵活、低成本、以用户为中心且易于更新的学习。为了满足在 COVID-19 大流行期间进行研究教育的需求，我们为肯尼亚医疗培训学院（KMTC）的高级文凭课程的学生开发并实施了一门电子学习课程。在本文中，我们报告了在资源有限的环境中教授在线研究课程的经验，以使其他医学教育者、学生和类似环境中的机构了解将电子学习干预措施纳入的最合适方法。
这是一项横断面研究，回顾了肯尼亚医疗培训学院研究课程的学习者和讲师的经验。邀请 2020/21 学年进入学院的所有高级文凭学生参加该研究。我们还包括了所有参与课程协调和促进的讲师。我们分析了从电子学习平台、在线课程评估表和课程讲师报告中收集的定性和定量数据。
我们在在线研究课程中招收了 933 名学生。这些学生已经加入了学院 11 个校区的 44 个高级文凭课程。学生在电子学习平台上完成同步电子学习活动有困难。只有 53%和 45%的学生分别能够完成前测和后测。通过对定性数据的主题分析，确定了四个主题（1）学生获得了研究能力（2）学生欣赏使用多样化的电子学习技术（3）学生感到研究课程负担过重（4）技术挑战降低了在线学习的效果。
我们的结果表明，电子学习可以用于在资源有限的环境中教授复杂的课程，如研究。然而，教师应该增加更多的异步电子学习活动，以提高教学和学习效果，并改善学生体验。
