RESUMO
Effective online teaching and learning requires readiness of all stakeholders, students, faculty, and administrators while considering contextual factors that influence the design and delivery of online learning. The purpose of this study is to explore how ready for online teaching faculty are in a Lebanese higher education context and to investigate readiness factors that impact their online teaching. It also aims at identifying any significant differences in readiness based on gender, years of teaching experience and discipline. A survey was developed based on a review of the literature and existing surveys that address readiness factors for online teaching. The survey was administered in Spring 2020, and 210 faculty at a private higher education institution completed the survey. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and descriptive statistics were conducted. The EFA resulted in 5 factors associated with faculty readiness to teach online, namely technology access and skills, course design, online pedagogy, attitude, and institutional support. Descriptive statistics revealed that faculty have the minimum required technology skills to teach online, yet they are faced with technical challenges associated with the context and the need for institutional support. MANOVA tests revealed a statistically significant difference between female faculty members who are readier in terms of course design and attitude than their counterpart males, a statistically significant difference in terms of course design for faculty who have more years of teaching experience. As for discipline specific readiness, majors that are focused on art and design revealed to be less ready for online teaching. This study implies the need for a more robust infrastructure to expand the delivery of online learning in Lebanon and the need for professional development for faculty to create pedagogically and technically enhanced online courses.
RESUMO
OBJECTIVES: This study describes the results of NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners) implementation in Balamand Medical School (BMS) from 2015 to 2019, after major curricular changes were introduced as of 2012. BMS students' performance was compared with the international USMLE step 1 (United States Medical Licensing Examination, herein referred to as step 1) cohorts' performances. The BMS students' NBME results were analyzed over the successive academic years to assess the impact of the serial curricular changes that were implemented. METHODS: This longitudinal study describes the performance of BMS preclinical second year medicine (Med II) students on all their NBME exams over 4 academic years starting 2015-2016 to 2018-2019. These scores were compared with the step 1 comparison group scores using item difficulty. The t test was computed for each of the NBME exams to check whether the scores' differences were significant. RESULTS: Results revealed that all BMS cohorts scored lower than the international USMLE step 1 comparison cohorts in all disciplines across the 4 academic years except Psychiatry. However, the results were progressively approaching step 1 results, and the difference between step 1 scores and BMS students' NBME scores became closer and not significant as of year 4. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study are promising. They show that the serial curricular changes enabled BMS Med II students' scores to reach the international cohorts' scores after 4 academic years. Moreover, the absence of statistical difference between cohort 4 scores and step 1 cohorts is not module dependent and applies to all clinical modules. Further studies should be conducted to assess whether the results obtained for cohort 4 can be maintained.
