Partnering in a Pandemic: a Case Study on Designing Teaching and Learning Tools by Undergraduate and Graduate Medical Students with Academic Support

Abstract

This case study reflects on the concept of student's-as-partners in a project that took place during the Summer 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, involving nine students from two medical schools in Ireland (University College Dublin (UCD) and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) and makes a pedagogical case for partnership in learning and teaching in medical education. This virtual partnership project lasted three weeks under the supervision of practitioners from the National Maternity Hospital (NMH). The focus of this paper on one output from the project: designing and developing Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) bank. This bank of MCQ questions were written by the students, based on national and international guidelines, then peer reviewed by the students before final review by academic staff and then integrated into the online teaching for the next iteration of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology module in September 2020. The reflections on this MCQ development work provides valuable insights on challenges and opportunities for medical students at both undergraduate and graduate level who are planning for collaborative partnerships as a component of their medical education, as well as academic-practitioners in medical education who are initiating student-staff partnerships

Keywords

• co-design
• learning technologies
• medical education
• online partnership
• students-as-partners