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Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre -including this research content -immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Background Clinical neuroscience training programmes are becoming increasingly competitive to enter. UK university neuroscience societies act as a local environment for students to develop their career interests and provide portfolio building opportunities through hosting events such as annual conferences. Recently there has been a transition to more of these events being held online yet the impact of this, if any, remains unclear. This prospective study aimed to identify the impact of student-led neuroscience conferences on delegates and examine attitudes towards an online delivery approach. Methods Multi-centre prospective survey study using pre-conference, post-conference, and 6-month post-conference online questionnaires distributed at 6 virtual student-led neuroscience conferences in 2021. The questionnaires had five-domains: demographics, career aspirations, academic skillsets, an educational manipulation check (EMC) and mode of delivery preference. Results 924 surveys were completed across 559 conference attendances. 79.5% of delegates were medical students. Interest in a neuroscience career (p < 0.001), preparedness to undertake research (p < 0.001) and presentation (p < 0.001), and EMC scores (p < 0.001) increased immediately post conference and were retained at 6 months. Most participants at 6 months post-attendance had completed an academic project (71.9%) or presentation (50.9%). Online format was preferred (65%) with reasons including elimination of travel and access to home facilities whilst lack of face-to-face interaction and engagement were recognised limitations. Conclusion UK student-led online neuroscience conferences play a role in developing knowledge, academic skillsets and career interest as well as inspiring and facilitating future portfolio building. A hybrid virtual and in-person experience would offer an ideal solution to future conferencing, providing options promoting engagement and interactivity whilst advocating sustainability, accessibility and widening participation.

Aims The current climate brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic has caused considerable changes in academic teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Online teaching and webinars over video conferencing platforms have become the new standard for delivery of material. Here we evaluate the efficacy of online webinars in the area of Neuroscience, Neurology and Neurosurgery. Methods We delivered 10 online webinars across 10 weeks, with one or two speakers, covering a range of topics across the fields of Neuroscience, Neurology and Neurosurgery. Feedback was gathered anonymously using an online feedback form following the event. Results were statistically analysed and significance reported using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results Our results show a statistically significant increase in the attendees’ self-reported knowledge on the subject, before and after the webinar (P &lt; 0.0001, n = 117); this represents a 57.3% increase in self-reported knowledge. Our feedback indicated that of all attendees across the 10 webinars, 82.9% rated the event overall “Very Good”, 79.5% were “Very Satisfied” with the organisation of the event, 84.6% with the speaker(s), 76.9% with the content of the event and 82.9% with the format of the webinar. Conclusions In summary, our analysis shows that delivering Neurological and Neurosurgical teaching via an online platform is a viable and effective method of delivering knowledge. This finding has significant implications not only in the current response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in the future provision of medical education at the undergraduate and postgraduate level.