Practical tips for a fast and successful transition to an online curriculum

TL;DR

This paper offers 12 practical tips for successfully transitioning to online education, based on experiences from a medical bachelor's program during the pandemic.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a set of 12 actionable tips for online curriculum transition, grounded in real-world challenges and the Community of Inquiry model.

Findings

The transition to online education requires attention to infrastructure, faculty development, student engagement, and teaching activities.

The Community of Inquiry model highlights the importance of teaching, social, and cognitive presence in online learning.

The tips are applicable for both emergency and planned transitions to online education.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the following lockdown forced educational institutions to transform their face-to-face curriculum into an online programme in a matter of weeks. In this article, we present 12 tips for a successful transition based on the challenges that we faced in the Bachelor of Medicine at Amsterdam Medical Centre. These tips are divided in four main themes: infrastructure, faculty development, student engagement, and teaching activities. The Community of Inquiry model is used as backbone in all tips, since teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence are essential factors in effective online education. These tips can be useful for everyone who wants to implement online education in their curriculum, whether borne out of necessity or by design.

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