Digital higher education in the first COVID-19 semester. A survey of teachers in public health, medicine and nursing

ABSTRACT

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has driven the digitisation in higher education institutions. At the same time, digital higher education teaching faced the challenge of designing teaching in the context of pre-existing resources, digital and didactic skills, and available technical infrastructure. Objective: The aim of the survey was to assess the assessment/evaluation of digital teaching, which has largely or completely replaced face-to-face teaching as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of lecturers in public health, medicine and nursing. Materials and methods: The cross-sectional survey took place online from June to August 2020 and data were collected via www.soscisurvey. The written survey was conducted among members of the German Society for Public Health (DGPH) and the Digitisation Committee of the Society for Medical Education (GMA) and the Education and Counselling Sections of the German Society for Nursing Science (DGP), and the Teaching Working Group of the German Society for Medical Sociology (DGMS) (n = 100). Results: In terms of the use of digital technologies in the courses, presentation tools ranked first, followed by learning management systems, video content and digital texts. With regard to the use of tools, participants most frequently mentioned various video conference tools). The creation of instructional videos was affirmed by 53% of the respondents;voting tools were mentioned as unknown by over 50%. Digital infrastructure of the universities, lack of didactic advice/support and legal questions (rights of use, data protection) were cited as challenges. Conclusion: New technology is mainly used for knowledge acquisition, knowledge transfer, rarely for activating students and designing collaborative teaching and learning arrangements as well as redesigning learning tasks and learning processes (individualised learning). Which of the currently tested digital teaching and learning formats will be increasingly used in university teaching in the future depends on many factors, including digital competence and the willingness of teachers and students to help develop the digital learning culture. © 2022, The Author(s).