Virtual learning solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic a University Italian Ophthalmology Department Perspective

Abstract

Background Few months after the COVID-19 pandemic burst, many aspects of the human life, including education, dramatically changed. Because of the lockdown measures taken to limit the virus spread in Italy, in-person teaching and learning have been interrupted in all health care disciplines and readapted in virtual formulae. Methods As an academic ophthalmology department, we had to maintain the educational needs of medical and orthoptic students, internships, surgical training of residents, as well as to cover the scientific update of health care personnel (HCPs), and the continuation of research and academic activities. To assure these needs we ideated an educational strategy and a team, which was then translated on a multichannel virtual platform created with Microsoft Teams. Results In this platform there were twenty-one channels organized in a public view mode, open to all Team members, or in private view mode to separate non-permanent HCPs, internships, residents, and students’ tasks, from permanent HCPs tasks. Virtual channels were dedicated to provide theoretical lessons, clinical cases, surgical video, internal meetings and webinar, to offer news from scientific societies, requests of appointments from biomedical companies, links with ophthalmological websites, to move forward research projects, to participate at institutional academic duties, and to obtain feedbacks from users. Residents continued their training on surgery using a surgical simulator, after consulting an agenda uploaded into the dedicated virtual channel. Conclusions These positive initial results should represent a boost to rapidly proceed with the development of even more versatile virtual learning solutions, given that the forecasts for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic are not encouraging.

Pandemia de COVID-19: impactos na educação de médicos residentes e fellows em Oftalmologia

“…As plataformas mais utilizadas durante a pandemia para o aprendizado virtual foram as seguintes: Microsoft Teams ® , Google Meet ® , Edmodo ® , Moodle ® e Blackboard ®17, 18 , enquanto as plataformas de videoconferência foram as seguintes: Zoom ® , Skype ® para empresas, WebEx ® e Adobe Connect ®5,17, 18 . O Twitter ® foi também muito utilizado como espaço de interação entre alunos e professores, especialmente para dirimir dúvidas e problemas médicos 19 .…”

“…A resposta ao desafio da educação foi dada ou reforçando ou implementando plataformas de aprendizagem virtual. Nesse período, essa estratégia recebeu um alto nível de apreciação tanto dos alunos como dos professores envolvidos 9,12,19 . Dado que a educação online deverá ocupar cada vez mais o espaço da educação tradicional durante a pandemia que continuará presente nos pró-eOftalmo ximos meses, torna-se imperativo o desenvolvimento, implementação e avaliação de novas estratégias que nos auxiliem a superar o maior número de dificuldades educacionais relacionadas à COVID-19 20 .…”