Digitalization of presence events in the COVID-19 pandemia – the lecturers’ perspective

Objective: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic a large part of attendance in medical education became impossible for reasons of disease control. Teachers had to switch to online courses at short notice. The associated developmental push of digital teaching methods, such as online teaching, has anticipated changes, some of which are tantamount to establishment. This study examines the experiences and effects of these changes from the teachers’ perspective. Methods: We conducted ten guideline-based anonymized e-mail interviews with lecturers of the Medical Faculty of the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg. Questions were asked on the subject areas of advantages and disadvantages, teaching experience and the future of digital teaching. The qualitative evaluation was based on Mayring. Results: The assessment of the digitization of face-to-face courses could be described by the inductively formed categories “social aspects”, “methodological aspects”, “institutional aspects”, “technical aspects” and “temporal-spatial aspects”. These revealed in particular concerns about the lack of personal exchange, temporal-spatial advantages, technical barriers and disagreement about the future role of digital teaching. Conclusion: In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face courses were replaced by online teaching, which is currently an accepted part of the curriculum. The results show, that teachers were able to implement the comprehensive ad-hoc digitization of theoretical courses well, although previously known problem areas were aggravated. Furthermore, a fundamental examination of the future role of digitized courses in medical education must take place.