"It just magically happened overnight!" - support for the digitalization of medical teaching provided by an interdisciplinary e-tutor team.

Abstract

Background: The forced and time-critical changeover to digital teaching and learning formats in the summer semester 2020 brought about numerous new challenges for the teaching staff of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Regensburg. Didactic and personnel support of clinical lecturers for the preparation, creation, and supervision of digital teaching materials became necessary.Project description: Since interdisciplinary teams seem to be superior in finding creative solutions, an interdisciplinary student e-tutor team was established at the Faculty of Medicine to support the digitalization of the range of courses. After their initial basic training the e-tutors had regular team meetings and internal mini-training sessions to ensure their continuous professional development. The e-tutors could be "requested" by clinical teaching staff and then accompanied the respective course preparation and implementation as required. Results and discussion: Both clinical teachers and students perceived the student e-tutors’ support to be very positive. The e-tutors described the interdisciplinarity of the team as an important learning resource and their work as an exciting and instructive task. Conclusion and outlook: Due to the positive experiences with the e-tutors, the faculty is striving to establish sustainable digital teaching and learning services in the coming semesters.