Combating the COVID-19 outbreak with a technology-driven e-flipped classroom model of educational transformation

摘要

The COVID-19 outbreak has profoundly influenced teaching pedagogies and assessment strategies of medical curricula worldwide. Clinical training and evaluations in hospitals and healthcare facilities face an unprecedented challenge due to the global lockdown, social distancing, and patients’ safety. ! At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a great majority of medical schools postponed or aborted clinical clerkships of undergraduate and postgraduate stu- dents in order to flatten the curve and to minimise personal contact for mitigating the risk of exposure for medical stu- dents. Such contingency-based actions provoked stress and uncertainty among faculty, students, and medical educators. In addition, the absence of clear guidelines by healthcare authorities added to the complexity of this dilemma. On 13 March 2020, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Med- ical Education (ACGME) took the executive decision of postponing all accreditation site visits and in-campus educational and accreditation meetings worldwide.” The ACGME has also recommended enhancing distance operational skills for the accomplishment of accreditation missions. On the same note, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the daunting task of framing a business continu- ity plan in medical schools has prompted medical educators to adapt apparently seamless educational transformation by developing institutional contingency plans.’ The obligatory and essential safety adaptationsmandated the use of a wide range of technology-driven applications such as Telehealth, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard, and ClickMeeting.