Abstract:

Introduction:
The closure of universities due to the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenge for all education professionals. In the medical schools, the situation was especially hard because many clinical teachers were fully committed to hospitals in an unprecedented health crisis. For this reason the Faculty of Medicine set out to design a Comprehensive Online Program that was approachable for teachers, that had common guidelines for all subjects and in which the student did not fade away, but rather promoted their commitment and self-regulated study.

Methods:
The methodology adopted by consensus for all the subjects was based on a weekly training itinerary in which the contents and activities were structured in a meticulous way. This methodology was applied for 5 weeks, since quarantine started, until the end of April 2020. At the beginning of the week the materials, activities and evaluation methods were uploaded to University of Vitorias’s Canvas platform and announced to students, who self-paced worked the contents. The materials prepared by the teacher included their own explanatory videos, notes and diagrams, evaluation questionnaires, tasks, peer evaluation activities, periodic tutorials, etc. At the end of the week, a synchronous online tutorial was carried out in order to go deep in the contents, to answer all doubts and strengthen knowledge. For the development of the methodology, different technologies were used, most of them integrated into our moodle platform. Different applications were applied for the recording of audiovisuals (explain everything, Screencast-o-matic, Screencastify), generation of questionnaires (Socrative, moodle, forms of Office 365), remote synchronous connection (Blackboard ultra, Microsoft Teams, zoom), etc... Final exams were carried out entirely remotely using a proctoring program and a closed browser (Lockdown Browser-respondus). At the end of the program, an opinion survey was completed by the students and teachers. The program was evaluated quantitatively (comparative academic results with past face-to-face courses) and qualitatively (opinion questionnaires) to analyze various aspects, including those covered in this paper, the effectiveness of the program to facilitate self-regulated learning and student engagement.

Results:
The overall balance of the subject shows a very high participation rate, as well as a good global assessment of the materials, activities and tutorials. Student motivation was significantly influenced by teacher interaction through email or specific forums. Overall, the student felt accompanied at all times and considered that the materials and activities facilitated self-regulated work. The final score of the exams was also higher than in the previous year, in global terms. We believe, therefore, that the online program has been adequate, adapted to the needs of teachers and students and that it has had a significant scope.

Keywords:

Medical education, medical students, self-regulatory learning, non-face-to-face training, online training, COVID19, lockdown.