domestic on-site teaching mode

Background

Sichuan University West China Medical School was the first institution in China to develop an undergraduate sonographer education program in 2016. This program was certificated by American Registry for Diagnostic Medical Sonography (ARDMS) and students are qualified for the ARDMS credential verification test. In this 4-year program, the international curriculum of ultrasound physics and hemodynamics was set for students in the third year since 2018. This study is aimed to compare the teaching effect of international remote teaching mode and domestic on-site teaching mode of this international curriculum before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

All undergraduate sonographer students after completing ultrasound physics and hemodynamics in the academic years 2018-2019 (30 students; before the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2020-2021 (47 students; during the COVID-19 pandemic) were included in the study. The scores of 77 students were analyzed for their curriculum. Independent samples t-test or Mann-Whitney test was employed to compare students' scores before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chi-square test was used to compare students' feedback about this curriculum through an online self-administered questionnaire. A p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.

Results

Total scores were comprised of four parts: in-class tests, homework, mid-term, and final exam scores. The mean in-class test score for domestic on-site teaching mode during the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly higher than that for international remote teaching mode before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there was no observed a statistically significant difference in homework, mid-term, final exam, and total scores between the two types of teaching modes. For questionnaire feedback, no significant difference was observed between the two groups regarding the satisfaction toward teachers, class atmosphere, teaching mode, curriculum content, exam difficulty, scores, and knowledge students gained. For the overall evaluation of the curriculum, 73.3% (22/30) of students were very satisfied before the COVID-19 pandemic, while 44.7% (21/47) of students felt very satisfied during the COVID-19 pandemic (p = 0.02).

Conclusion

The general teaching effect of domestic on-site teaching mode during the COVID-19 pandemic was comparable to that of international remote teaching mode before the COVID-19 pandemic, and domestic on-site teaching mode may provide a better in-class teaching effect.

E-Learning Is Not Inferior to On-Site Teaching in a Psychiatric Examination Course

Background: Implementing e-learning into medical education is a growing field of research. Researchers have had positive experiences so far, and evidence suggests it to be no less effective than offline teaching. However, there are a few findings concerning psychiatric education and the use of simulated patients online. Methods: We developed an online workshop for medical students at our psychiatric clinic, including group work exercises, lectures, and interviews with simulated patients. To compare the learning outcome, a cohort of students learning online was compared with a previous cohort that learned on-site. The same objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) was used in both cases. Evaluation questionnaires were gathered from students and lecturers and were compared with the former semesters along with the exam results. Results: The exam grades did not significantly differ between on-site and online teaching, even though students rated their own communication skills better with online teaching. We also found that the connection experienced between students and teachers was impaired without on-site contact. Discussion: We conclude that an online course may be an effective alternative to on-site teaching but requires further improvement to maintain a dependable student-teacher relationship.

Teaching the ABCs of bioinformatics: a brief introduction to the Applied Bioinformatics Course

With the development of the Internet and the growth of online resources, bioinformatics training for wet-lab biologists became necessary as a part of their education. This article describes a one-semester course ‘Applied Bioinformatics Course’ (ABC, http://abc.cbi.pku.edu.cn/) that the author has been teaching to biological graduate students at the Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences for the past 13 years. ABC is a hands-on practical course to teach students to use online bioinformatics resources to solve biological problems related to their ongoing research projects in molecular biology. With a brief introduction to the background of the course, detailed information about the teaching strategies of the course are outlined in the ‘How to teach’ section. The contents of the course are briefly described in the ‘What to teach’ section with some real examples. The author wishes to share his teaching experiences and the online teaching materials with colleagues working in bioinformatics education both in local and international universities.