Abstract

The project is designed to enhance the capability of the Faculty of Medicine to develop innovative flipped classroom teaching, building on the experience of Acute Care and other flipped classroom teaching.

Our flipped classroom approach will use Internet and smartphone app eLearning, based on interactive tutorials, videos and animations, to replace didactic teaching. This will free teachers to concentrate on high-value activities such as guiding student’s experiential learning and small group tutorials.

Flipped classroom modules will be developed to teach medical students Microbiology, Surgery and Paediatrics. These specialties were chosen because, when combined with existing flipped classroom courses, experience will be developed in teaching both laboratory and clinical medicine to students with different levels of maturity.

We will draw on the experience of teachers with expertise in developing successful flipped classroom courses and work with content experts to develop new flipped classroom courses thereby improving the learning experience and environment for students while disseminating expertise in flipped classrooms to a larger pool of teachers within the Faculty.

To further enhance dissemination of expertise, two workshops will be held for CUHK teachers on the Development of Flipped Classroom Teaching and the results of our project will be presented in the Teaching and Learning Expo, departmental meetings, international conferences and a scientific journal.

Brief write-up

Project objectives

1. Develop eLearning based Flipped Classroom modules to improve the learning environment for students in the Faculty of Medicine.
2. Build capacity for further expansion of the Flipped Classroom teaching.

Activities, process and outcomes

1. Develop eLearning based Flipped Classroom modules to improve the learning environment for students in the Faculty of Medicine.
   eLearning teaching material development in microbiology and surgery has been completed. Students response to the new material and teaching format have been evaluated. Students are satisfied with the flipped classroom teaching module in microbiology (mean score: 3.62 with 5 as the maximum score). The case-scenario based pre-class tutorial and in-class lecture score highest in the evaluation. After viewing the newly developed eLearning material in surgery, students’ confidence level in obtaining informed consent for surgical procedure has been improved by the newly developed eLearning material (from 2.94 to 4.12). The eLearning material development in paediatrics is partially completed. Further modification is still ongoing to enhance the audio-visual effect. Further evaluation is planned in the coming academic year starting September 2019.


2. Build capacity for further expansion of the Flipped Classroom teaching.
   Principal supervisor has joined the eLearning Community of Practice (CoP) at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. A special group was formed in January 2019 and the first workshop was organized on 8th January 2019. Teaching staff from Department of Microbiology, Surgery, Pharmacy, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care and School of Biomedical Science have attended the two-hour workshop. Further workshop will be organized in the coming three months.

Deliverables and evaluation

Performance/outcome measures data have been collected since 2018 and further data will be collected in the coming academic year. Focus group interview will be conducted to collect qualitative data when all the modules are finished. Data regarding flipped classroom teaching experience in the faculty will be collected through the newly formed eLearning Community of Practice (CoP).

In view of the delayed production of some of the flipped classroom modules, it is difficult to conduct student evaluations close to the end of term examination period/summer break. Evaluation will be conducted later in 2019 during the extended project period.

Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices

The evaluation results have been presented in the Teaching and Learning Expo held by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in December 2018 and Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference organized by the National University of Singapore in January 2019. To further disseminate our expertise in flipped classroom teaching, we have just been accepted to conduct a half-day workshop “Flipped classroom teaching in Clinical Medicine” in the coming Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference in January 2020 in Singapore. The workshop will be conducted by clinical teachers from Department of Microbiology, Surgery, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care.