During the spring of 2020, due to the advancing pandemic of Covid-19, there was a need to move teaching to the online environment in a short time. This need has affected all universities in Europe, but the position of medical faculties is specific in the fact that a large part of teaching takes place in the form of practical exercises and clinical practice, as well as in the fact that senior students were heavily involved in volunteering, which placed great demands on their time possibilities, which are limited even in normal times due to the complexity of the study. The main goal of the project “New Era in Medical Education (NEWMED)” is to rationalize online teaching at the participating medical faculties thanks to the unified methodological guidance of academics in the preparation of syllabi and online study materials for students. The primary target group of the proposed project are academic staff from the involved partner institutions, for whom the rapid transition to online teaching during the spring of 2020 meant a great burden. The secondary target group, which will benefit from the implementation of the NEWMED project, will be students of the participating medical faculties. The NEWMED project implementation will be performed by the staff of Masaryk University (MU – leading organization), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) and Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice (UPJS). Within the submitted project, three intellectual outputs will be created: 1) Detailed analysis of transition to online teaching - the transition to online teaching at the participating institutions during the spring of 2020 will be analysed in detail and, based on the analysis, recommendations for the creation of further intellectual outputs will be determined. 2) Methodological manual - the team of methodologists will prepare an electronic methodological manual for academic staff of medical faculties, in which they will present to them suitable teaching methods for specific courses, suitable testing methods and acquaint them with the preparation of effective online study materials. 3) Implementation guide - this intellectual output will supplement the methodological manual with instructions for the implementation of the created online study materials into the information systems of partner universities. The results of the project will be presented at three multiplier events during the project implementation period. Through the implementation of the NEWMED project, the methodological guidance of academics at the participating medical faculties will be improved, the quality of online teaching will rise and, indirectly, the quality of health care provided by graduates of partner faculties will be improved. The project will be implemented for 24 months.
The main objective of the project was to rationalize online teaching at the cooperating medical faculties through a unified methodological guide for academics to prepare syllabi and online study materials. The following objectives were met within the project: a/The transformation of teaching to online during the pandemic situation at the partner institutions was mapped b/Clear rules were set for participation in online learning c/A specific manual and a guide for the implementation of the methodology were prepared for each partner, taking into account the specificities of the information systems d/ Academics actively participated in the development of the methodology and provided feedback on the basis of which the methodology manual was developed.
The project responded to the need for increased demands for the use of online learning tools in higher education due to the pandemic situation in Europe. Based on feedback from students and increased pressure on academics to improve the quality of electronic learning materials, the need for a unified methodology for online learning and the creation of learning materials arose. The main objective of the project was to rationalize and produce a single methodology manual applicable to medical education based on the analysis.