Tim Young, Salman Haider (Queen Square Institute of Neurology Education Department)
10 minute talk
Over the last ‘pandemic year’, many face-to-face courses made heroic efforts to convert to online teaching. As a well-established fully online course, our clinical neurology by distance learning MSc/Diploma/PG Certificate programme was fortunately in a position to help guide others with this transition. We also saw the opportunity to develop our own course of 82 students (all doctors) based worldwide. Building on proactively obtained student feedback, in 2020 we developed our first live regular group discussions based on clinical cases. These synchronous, fully interactive, case discussions evolved into a true community of learners. Our 2021 February iteration incorporated synchronous tutor and student interaction spanning 6 continents.
Online teaching is often viewed as ‘second best’ to face-to-face teaching, especially for the building of communities. We will demonstrate that this does not have to be the case. While many courses are concentrating on getting back to the way things were, we wish to strongly advocate the ongoing use and development of online techniques as a powerful way forward, not just for Covid-19, but for future education too.