Online teaching has the potential to transcend geographical boundaries, is flexible, learner centered and can help students develop self-directed learning skills. The recently introduced competency-based curriculum has also advocated e-learning as an indispensable tool for self-directed learning. For effective online learning, good online teaching practices should be adopted. These include alignment of online teaching and learning with delivery of curriculum and objectives, synchronous, and asynchronous interaction between teacher and student, encouraging the development of higher-order thinking skills, active learning, and self-directed learning has been impacting the Healthcare System
With these complexities, it is easy to see that the initial definition helps to set the scene, but fails to impart the breadth and depth of e-learning and the many complex ways it relates to more traditional approaches. As you move through this guide, we encourage you to reflect and to develop a more holistic view of e-learning and how it does or can relate to your own practice
E-learning is now widely used in various forms of case-based or problem-based learning (PBL). Because PBL is now so prevalent in medical education, this section will focus on PBL, in both the blended and entirely online scenarios. Even if you do not use PBL, this section should provide ideas that are applicable to your own work. For the purposes of this guide, it is enough to note that PBL is learner-centered and constructivist, and involves students’ working in groups, being presented with a real world problem or case (usually paper-based), extracting key issues and questions, investigating them and then reporting back to the group
Capacity building of faculty through faculty development programs for the development of specific competencies such as social competency, pedagogical competency, managerial competency, and technical competency in the times of COVID-19 (Impacting the Healthcare System) is now recognized as the need of the hour. Although online teaching and learning in medical education is new, it has the potential to become mainstream in future.