How technology-enhanced experiential e-learning can facilitate the development of person-centred communication skills online for health-care students: a qualitative study

Liao, Faith; Murphy, David; Wu, Jeng Cheng; Chen, Chien Yu; Chang, Chun Chao; Tsai, Po Fang

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought a new challenge to medical education—health-care students had fewer opportunities to interact with and treat real patients in clinical settings. Interpersonal communication skills are often developed through human interaction and communication in person, and few studies have proposed feasible digital solutions to develop learners’ communication skills. Consequently, understanding how medical teachers facilitate and implement online training programmes, with feasible instruments, to enhance students’ learning effectiveness when in-person training is not possible is critical. Methods: By using a convenience sampling method, we recruited 26 health-care students from seven medical schools in Taiwan. Through semistructured interviews and the thematic analysis technique, we analysed the latent learning factors from the experience of implementing the technology-enhanced experiential e-learning tool ‘mPath’. Results: Three themes were generated: A) transferring theory into practice, B) increasing authenticity with analytical features, and C) maintaining autonomy with nondirective learning. The features accessibility, flexibility, intractability, and visualisation with the characteristics of remote accessibility and flexibility, repetition and retrospect, feedback requesting, and visualised analytical reports were considered to enhance learning outcomes. Conclusion: This study indicated how online training using technology could develop the participants’ person-centred communication skills and what features influenced the learning outcomes of social distancing. mPath may be a feasible online learning approach and has provided inspiration for developing health-care students’ communication skills when in-person training is not possible.

Citation

Liao, F., Murphy, D., Wu, J. C., Chen, C. Y., Chang, C. C., & Tsai, P. F. (2022). How technology-enhanced experiential e-learning can facilitate the development of person-centred communication skills online for health-care students: a qualitative study. BMC Medical Education, 22, Article 60. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03127-x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 17, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jan 25, 2022
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jul 29, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 29, 2022
• Journal: BMC Medical Education
• Electronic ISSN: 1472-6920
• Publisher: Springer Verlag
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Article Number: 60
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03127-x
• Keywords: Education; General Medicine
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/9409406
• Publisher URL: https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-022-03127-x