On 25th February 2022, part 1 of the 13th Academic Teacher Training Course (ATTC) 2022 was successfully completed.
For the 2nd time, the course was provided fully online due to COVID-19. Zoom and Moodle were the replacement of a physical classroom, the heart of gathering and the method of delivering the various course sessions. The course started on 5th February with the kick-off session with a highly diverse group of 24 participants in terms of health professions and cultures. Two weeks of self-organised activities then followed with preceding video lectures, a group exercise and self-reflection in an inverted classroom scenario.
Photo courtesy of: Swapon Kanti Das
During the 5 days of the online course week, participants learned about different teaching concepts and methods in a workshop on teaching design, different types of assessment in a learning circle, improved their presentation skills through the impactful microteaching exercise and discussed values as a teacher during intercultural training. In addition, lots of group work and a peer group consultation allowed participants to share their teaching experiences and challenges with other colleagues from around the globe, receive feedback on different issues and got the opportunity to improve themselves. On the second day of the course week, we shared our lunchtime through an “online picnic”, where all the participants introduced different delicious dishes of their countries. This was a fun and enjoyable moment.
To deliver online teaching as interactive as in a physical classroom is the new challenge everyone faces. Therefore, participants got familiarized with several online interactive tools like Miro board, Menti, LMU-onlineTED and Padlet to make the classes livelier and more interactive. Since there are few sessions of formal training on these online tools for health academic teachers, this course incorporated all the highly impactful teaching tools so that participants got a hands-on experience on these tools.
One participant feedback commented: “ATTC helps me to enrich my teaching method and introduce me with lots of online tools which make teaching more interactive as well as induce active participation.” Many participants also pointed out that giving – receiving constructive feedback was a very helpful exercise for them. As a student of learning sciences, I am happy to have been in the training because I gained lots of practical insight into medical teaching. My takeaway message would be to think beyond one’s perspective and consider the audience’s perspective while delivering teaching.
Now, all participants will implement their new learnings about teaching in their teaching practice. On July 29th, they will present the results of the transfer phase (part 2) during the Online Symposium.
Written by: Swapon Kanti Das