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In this article we explore an innovative pedagogical approach initiated during the COVID-19 lockdown period to support student learning in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Cape Town. Student isolation and the lack of exposure to clinical cases during this period brought many challenges to the teaching platform. However, the global disruption enabled an ontological opening for imaginative and creative experimentation, an aspect of teaching rarely brought into medical training. We take up the unusual work of a clinician educator and others to describe the process of developing novel video recordings for undergraduate medical students. These videos, used as pedagogical tools, enabled new ways of engaging with core curricular needs in this discipline: for the teacher, new ways of producing teaching materials, and for the students, new ways of learning medical content. The videos drew on a range of creative modes including drawing and acting, to augment student learning. As authors, we suggest that the collision of the clinical content and the performative delivery in the videos fostered deep learning and made the curricular material alive and engaging. The existence of the videos enables a sustainable blended learning approach moving forward. The uploading of the videos as Open Educational Resources onto a YouTube channel and a public website now also contribute to teaching resources extending beyond institutional boundaries. © SOTL in the South 2023.
RESUMO
Introduction: Obesity is a major public health problem worldwide and the prevalence of childhood obesity is of particular concern. Effective interventions for preventing and treating childhood obesity aim to change behaviour and exposures at the individual, community, and societal levels. However, monitoring and evaluating such changes is challenging. Development in the fields of behaviour change science, public health, clinical paediatrics, technology, citizen science and Big Data analytics can be harnessed to implement multidisciplinary research addressing the prevention and treatment of child and adolescent obesity at a population level. The H2020 project “BigO: Big Data Against Childhood Obesity” (http://bigoprogram.eu) is one example of such research efforts. Following the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the BigO research team in Ireland adapted study procedures to ensure collection of Big Data could continue with modified procedures. Aim: To present the approach used for BigO data collection in Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic and to explore changes in data collection over time. Methods: Step 1 reviewed and sought approval for ethical and regulatory procedures relevant to the collection, monitoring, and storage of personal data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in children from the general population and those attending a multidisciplinary clinical service for severe obesity. Step 2 explored recruitment strategies and the informed consent and assent process. Step 3 explored the collection of anonymized data including: photographs of meals, beverages and advertisements, physical activity metrics, and masked GPS data using geo-hash representing geographical area rather than detailed coordinates. Following aggregation, analysis, and visualization of collected data descriptive statistics were used to explore patterns of behaviour in the population over time in order to better understand whether the system could be used to monitor behaviours through a period of significant societal change. Results: New ethical approval was granted for the updated methods. From 88 secondary schools approached to participate in the study, five agreed to commence an online consent process with parents and students. In the school setting, 700 children were eligible for study inclusion and 178 consented to participate, respectively. For the clinical study, images of outdoor advertisements collected from participants in Ireland changed during lock-down periods as children had less access to outdoor space and use of study smartwatches was discontinued to adhere to local infection control policies. Please see Table 1 for further details on results of the clinical study. Conclusions: Real-time collection of Big Data was possible through a period of societal upheaval though the expected volume of data was reduced. Such data may prove an important tool for monitoring interventions at the level of the individual child or at the population level for this vulnerable group.