1. What problems were addressed?
In our Bachelor of Nursing programme (part‐time), students are registered nurses working within various clinical and primary care settings. Because of the coronavrius disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, all face to face teaching has been suspended since early February and our epidemiology course has moved entirely to online teaching. We needed to address the challenges associated with the fact that the course is offered to final‐year students who are simultaneously working on the frontline. It was thought imperative that students graduate on time and that the online learning activities be flexible.
2. What was tried?
Our flexible learning environment was developed in partnership with students in a manner that allowed their preferences and feedback to shape how the teaching and learning activities were to be delivered. First, we have made the learning resources more flexible and accessible by recording all lectures with the video platforms Panopto (Panopto, Seattle, WA, USA) or ZoomTM (Zoom Video Communications Inc., San Jose, CA, USA) and making them available until the end of the semester. Second, lecture handouts are now designed to be self‐explanatory and include examples illustrating how epidemiological concepts including the calculation of odds ratios, and sensitivity and specificity values can be applied. All recorded lectures are divided into different subsections for convenient review and revision of the unit material. Third, interactive, real‐time consultation meetings with students are provided after the recorded lectures, before assignments are submitted and examinations administered, so that students can ask questions and learn from other students. Fourth, to supplement these tutorials, online discussion forums have been set up on Moodle (Moodle Pty Ltd., West Perth, WA, Australia), an online learning management system. Students can ask questions regarding the lectures at any time. Course tutors are responsible for the online discussion forums. Last, COVID‐19 has been incorporated into the teaching materials to illustrate concepts such as incubation period, fatality rate and surveillance through the inclusion of some of the latest publications about its epidemiology.
3. What lessons were learned?
First, even when we provide live lectures online, the lectures need to be recorded and made available to students so they can view them repeatedly at their own convenience. This is particularly important for part‐time students who are working on the frontline during this stressful period. During the COVID‐19 pandemic, our students have extra duties and longer working hours. Learning and teaching activities must be accessible to students. We further recommend that the recordings be divided into different subsections with each conveying only one key concept. We have found it particularly helpful in our recordings to finish the subsection by posting an example question for students to try and to explain the answers in the next section of the recording. The advantages of using subsections include the fact that only the subsection rather than the whole lecture must be re‐recorded if something goes wrong. It is also easier to hold students’ attention if the recording is not too long. Further, students can more easily jump to the subsection they want to study.
Second, recorded lectures (one‐way communication) should be supplemented by interactive meetings with students. Based on our experience, students give feedback to teachers and ask questions related to the teaching materials and assignments. Students also learn from other students’ questions when they participate in these meetings. Furthermore, teachers can provide emotional and psychological support. Importantly, these meetings diminish the repeating of student questions, which means that teachers do not have to answer the same questions several times.
Last, it is worth noting that our students have not been very responsive to the online forums. It appears that such forums do not encourage them to ask questions or discuss the course content. Instead, the students make use of the interactive meetings to engage in more useful collaborative experiences with other students and the course teachers.