Blended Learning Is a Feasible and Effective Tool for Basic Pediatric Spinal Deformity Training

STUDY DESIGN: Descriptive study. OBJECTIVE: Assessing the applicability of blended learning to specific domains of spine surgery. METHODS: After the needs assessment, a blended pediatric spine deformity course program was designed. A total of 33 participants, including orthopedic and neurosurgeons, registered for the course and all of them completed an online entrance quiz. Thus, they were eligible to have online part of course, which included the theoretical part of the course and also a discussion forum where the discussions about the topics facilitated by faculty. Thirteen of 33 subjects participated second part of the blended pediatric spine deformity course. This face-to-face (F2F) part consisted of case discussions for each topic and discussions facilitated by faculty members. The same quiz was also taken before and after the F2F part. All quiz results were compared statistically. RESULTS: There were 11 lectures within the online part and 6 case discussions in the F2F part. The quiz scores were improved significantly by having a complete blended pediatric deformity course (P < .05). CONCLUSIONS: The current study has demonstrated that blended learning format, including online and F2F, is feasible and effective in training for a domain of spine surgery, pediatric deformity in this specific context.