On 26th November we celebrated our second anniversary! We thank all our students, who are embarking on this beautiful and exciting journey with us, for their trust and dedication to become good medical professionals. We also express our sincerest appreciation to our team members for their loyal support, continued hard-work, and unrelenting determination in EDU’s success story.
4500 Collective Hours in Clinical Practice
Innovation plays a vital role in our story and is at the centre of EDU’s successful model. In the last two years, our students have collectively achieved an astounding 4500 hours in clinical practice at EDU’s partner hospitals in Germany – this is even before starting the third year! We are immensely proud!
Early clinical rotation is one of our most important promises. Consistent and meaningful practical experience fills a gap that cannot be covered by digital resources. This practical time ensures that our students have acquired not only the adequate practical experience to be a satisfactory professional, but also the team-building and human experience needed to be a great professional. While 2020 has been a challenge, our students still thrived in their clinical rotations.
161 Group Projects
We assured our students that they would have a contemporary learning experience. For us, this meant creating a student-centered learning environment where students can try and excel at different learning methodologies. At EDU, learners take initiative in their lessons. The spotlight is always on students. They apply the material learned during self-study to their virtual classroom activities with the next step being the application of knowledge to their clinical rotations. As of today, students have completed 161 group projects with the assistance of tutors over the last two years.
1117 Facilitated Sessions on Our Digital Campus
When we asked our students what they appreciated most, it was the quality of the digital lessons. Among other formats, our students attended almost 300 medical virtual classes over the last two years. These interactions lay a profound foundation in terms of medical and scientific knowledge for students. In this space, they learn and practice medicine from an understanding developed using evidence-based medicine principles.
How do our experts and tutors reduce video-fatigue and maintain student interest week after week? To address some of the known shortcomings of digital learning and traditional teaching methods, we have adopted and amplified the flipped classroom model. Much more than just a buzz word, our students prepare for participation in lessons prior to the session using a myriad of resources that range from text to self-learning tools. This preparation, coupled with self-assessment and tutoring brought into each session, leads to exchanges of meaningful discussions, case scenarios, and less of a focus on one-way lecturing. Our students partake in breakout rooms, quizzes, controversial debates, and real-life applications of medical circumstances to their learning.
384 Personal Development Sessions (Mentoring)
We aim to develop our students into both lifelong learners and empathetic practitioners. One way that we try to hone these skills is by putting a strong emphasis on their personal development during mentoring sessions. These sessions made up more than 30% of the 1117 digitally facilitated sessions over the past two years.
We believe that this is a strategy for success in terms of a pedagogical approach that cultivates a learner’s ability to understand and control their learning environment. More specifically, we have designed a series of “Learn to Learn” courses to accompany our first-year medical students step-by-step on their learning path, addressing self-regulated learning (SRL) skills. SRL is particularly relevant for medical students to learn across a wide spectrum of subjects by analysing their task requirements, setting productive goals, and working out the best ways to achieve those goals.
The Founding Cohort: What Makes Second Year Special
3 students from our founding cohort, Giovanna, Dustin and Felix were excited to celebrate EDU’s second birthday with us. Second-year was not only special to us, but also to our students. Dustin remembers it was notably more difficult than the first year, as he was exposed to more varying and complex topics since. Felix was happy to see changes in the new module that, on one hand, had a more clinical focus. While on the other hand, demonstrated the strengthening of theoretical background. Giovanna compared her study path to puzzles wherein the first year, students were given individual pieces of the puzzle. The second-year saw them receiving a few more pieces which eventually fit together to display exciting patterns of understanding the bigger picture. She’s already looking forward to the next year’s set of puzzle pieces.
The Moments During Clinical Rotation
Generally, these moments, those in clinical rotations, are the ones that resonate with the students the most. It is the time they can connect more personally with not only each other, but also the content they have been learning is brought to life. Felix highlights this period as treasured time spent with his classmates. He believes the combined digital training he received, together with the patient-oriented practice and clinical research, will make him better in the future by starting from a strong, practical foundation. Giovanna found the training in the advanced life support department in the simulation centre at the Helios Hospital Erfurt to be her highlight.
Dustin had an unforgettable experience in the geriatric ward. Throughout his rotation period, he worked with an 88-year-old multimorbid patient who suffered from a humerus fracture. He learned every step of the process and treatment, including the operation, postoperative treatment, treatment of the multimorbid person, and her rehabilitation. Dustin followed the patient’s case from day one until the day she was discharged back home. It was a thrill that further strengthened his interest in medicine by showing him first-hand the complexity of the healthcare system and how, despite its complexity, helps people daily.
Giovanna found the two clinical rotations that took place during the pandemic were of increased valuable experience. The pandemic was an additional challenge to her clinical rotation that was an excellent learning opportunity. She expressed how rotations taught her more empathetically the importance of her duties and responsibilities.
The current global pandemic has made 2020 a very difficult year for most people and our students grateful that their study routine remained unaffected during this period. This was made possible by EDU being a digital institution that was way ahead of the curve in terms of being both high-quality and digital.
What’s Next?
The third-year at EDU will be a challenge for our students and they are already thrilled to take it on. Next year, our first cohort will be writing their bachelor thesis and spending a great deal more time on medical research. For Giovanna, she is most looking forward to more fixation on evidence-based medicine as she steps into the final year of her bachelor’s degree. We are excited to continue supporting our students in all aspects until they reach their goals and take their first steps in medicine!
2020 is a year of challenges and opportunities for growth. As a digital Institute of higher education, ahead of the digital learning curve, especially in medicine, we took the pandemic as an opportunity. We committed more than ever to support the success of our students and are inspired by their motivation to become great medical practitioners. For us at EDU, our role in their future success stories was to ensure that their studies were not affected by the current global context. This success was and continues to be because of the people involved in our own success story. Thank you to all of you who have always trusted EDU and contributed to our accomplishments in these two years.
