Repurposing lectures and reviews into educational blogs.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a disruption in health education,1 and the delivery of content and skill development evolved into hybrid models, where most of the knowledge-based material is delivered online and the practical activities in person. This requires the faculty to have technological skills, to create learning objects (LO) that are suitable for the online methodology. A LO can be used as a stand-alone module or as a resource to create content.2 The repurpose of LOs has been described in health sciences education, including nursing3 and dentistry,4 with favorable response from the students. A proposed strategy to create LOs in an efficient manner, is to follow the concept of a supply chain, from planning to deployment, with the possibility of repurposing the material for a variety of educational contexts, using tools with the potential to export to diverse media.5 The transformation of a lecture or a literature review to a digital format, constitutes a re-design where the material evolves to produce additional educational objects. The New Media Consortium has created specific guidelines for the creation of learning objects.6 Some examples are a sharable content object reference model (SCORM) for a learning management system (LMS); a video file; a written document (blog or manual); or even a podcast. The newly developed LO can be used not only for teaching purposes, but also for marketing or showcasing to potential students and collaborators (Figure 1). By repurposing lectures designed for in-person instruction, and literature reviews created as complementary readings, a collection of blogs was created and hosted on an open platform (ostrowon.usc.edu). The blogs are organized by discipline and provide useful information regarding clinical entities and their management, suitable for clinicians or patients. The analytics on the website (April 1st – June 30th, 2022), show that the most visited blogs are those focusing on step-by-step “how-to”s for clinical procedures (Figure 2). The main challenge is to maintain a continuous flow of updated information. The proposed model of blog creation based on existing content could be used for any discipline. Further research is required to compare the efficacy of the blogs with other types of tools, such as videos and podcasts for dental education.