PECULIARITIES OF TEACHING THE MODULE «OPHTHALMOLOGY» WITHIN THE DISCIPLINE «GENERAL MEDICAL TRAINING» IN THE DISTANCE LEARNING

Abstract

National higher medical education is currently searching for the ways out of crisis situation in the COVID-19 pandemic and creating a convenient format for students to acquire knowledge especially for mastering practical skills as well as personalized communication based on the view of leading national specialists in medical education concerning the possibilities of distance training of doctors on-line.

The aim – to present the experience of mastering practical skills as well as personalized on-line communication while teaching the «Ophthalmology» module in the «General Medical Training» discipline in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the quarantine restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the mastering of the module "Ophthalmology" in the discipline "General Medical Training" took place remotely by means of the educational portal of the Dnipropetrovsk Medical Academy http://moodle.dma.dp.ua in the mode of synchronous learning that provided fast and direct feedback between a teacher and students in real time as during regular face-to-face learning. The application of activating pedagogical strategies depended on the format of the practical lesson, the specific topic and the personalized task that the students received. The need to test the basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology determined the content of the first day of the cycle in ophthalmology. The individual task was to draw the structure of the eye and the auxiliary apparatus of the eye on the provided samples. Consolidation of the material learned on different days of the cycle "Ophthalmology" was due to watching educational films, photo illustrations from the video library of the department and work with the picture of the eye structure where it was necessary to mark the structures of the eye affected by various diseases (conjunctivitis, episcleritis, scleritis, keratitis, iridocyclitis, uveitis, endophthalmitis, acute inflammatory diseases of the eyelids and lacrimal organs, acute glaucoma, burns, hemorrhage and dry eye syndrome). Creating PowerPoint presentations by students in distance learning as an aspect of independent personal work on a chosen topic allowed students to become more involved in the learning process and contributed to the development of information competence not only authors of presentations, but also those students who listened to the presentation and evaluated it. Thus, the combination of different forms of mastering educational material in distance learning (traditional lecture, practical lesson using drawing, creating presentations in PowerPoint), allows to develop different cognitive scenarios for mastering both theoretical material and mastering practical skills.