Teaching Healthcare Professional Students in Online Learning during COVID-19: Reflection of University Lecturers

Abstract

Online education has been regarded as a lifeline for many education institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic, offering students a means to advance their education and career. While face-to-face teaching universities convert their education curricula to the online settings, many institutions lack effective online teaching strategies, leading to reduced student enrolment and satisfaction. Contrarily, we have been receiving an ever-increasing number of healthcare professional students in our learning department since the outbreak, while maintaining high satisfaction. These students work as registered professional key workers and study online. Among numerous measures taken to support this student group, this short paper reports four effective teaching practices we have implemented: (a) active use of adaptive learning, (b) Padlet discussions, (c) wellbeing webinars, and (d) resilience building. These teaching strategies are deemed to address weaknesses of online learning and offer emotional support to students. Our teaching practices will be useful to many universities supporting this crucial group of students in the online environment.