Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has led teachers and educational administrators to quickly adopt remote learning to ensure that teaching is not disrupted. However, it is not clear how well-prepared our first-year students are to respond to this new normal mode of learning, especially if the COVID-19 crisis lingers for a long time. The long-standing social isolation and lack of on-campus learning has deprived our first-year students of the opportunity to form personal bonds with their peers and teachers. It is also very difficult for teachers to identify students with emotional problems when all classes are online. According to our in-house data, we have certain percentage of medical students who are showing symptoms of depression, anxiety and sleep problems and the social isolation may exacerbate the existing situation.
Our team believes that the quality and quantity of engagement and interaction between students and teachers is essential to students’ mental and emotional health, and to their learning and professional identity formation. In this project, we will pilot a series of online psychoeducational seminars/workshops, assisted by e-assessment tools, to both strengthen student engagement and to identify students’ needs during the ongoing period of social distancing. A series of psychoeducational seminars/workshops that were conducted last year by an experienced clinical psychologist will be re-packaged into a series of interactive micro-module videos. These micro-module videos will be themed and promoted by interactive e-posters (懶人包), that will summarise the key tips and messages to be delivered in each seminar. E-assessment tools will be introduced for self-reviews to understand their mental distress during this period of pandemic crisis and current social isolation so that the students can be provided with appropriate support.
Brief write-up
Project objectives
Our team believes that the quality and quantity of engagement and interaction between students and teachers is essential to students’ mental and emotional health, and to their learning and professional identity formation. In this project, we will pilot a series of online psychoeducational seminars/workshops, assisted by e-assessment tools, to both strengthen student engagement and to identify students’ needs during the ongoing period of social distancing. A series of psychoeducational seminars/workshops that were conducted last year by an experienced clinical psychologist will be re-packaged into a series of interactive micro-module videos and this free self-help website is named as e-hub. This e-hub online platform houses a series of 10 micro-module videos that help students better understand themselves and learn strategies to cope with different types of stress that are common in the medical field:
Assisted with e-assessment tools, student users can also identity their mental health concerns and explore whether further assessment would be needed.
Activities, process and outcomes
As e-hub was just completed, major activities are focused on promoting this new online platform to all medical students from Year 1 to Year 6 through road shows, Faculty emails, and year orientation sessions between early September to November 2021.
Deliverables and evaluation
According to our small-scale online surveys (sample size =15) before launching this website to all medical students, we received a number of positive feedback from the student users which reflect that most of our outcomes can be achieved. They include:
• The MM videos helped to raise awareness on self-care
• The MM videos are informative
• The topics addressed are relevant to students’ need
• The advices given are practical.
• The “lazy-bag” is a quick guide to the topic addressed
• The self-assessment tools helped me to gain understanding of my current mental state.
Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices
The impact of e-hub will be concluded after we receive enough survey data by summer of 2022.
Our project has presented the creation of e-hub in the Teaching and Learning Innovation Expo 2021.
Impact on teaching and learning
The impact of e-hub will be concluded after we receive enough survey data by summer of 2022.
