Earlier this year, AO Trauma successfully launched the new AO Trauma Online Course—Basic Principles of Fracture Management Essentials. Created by the Residents Education Taskforce in response to the cancellation of face-to-face events due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this online course has been very well received by the participants.
The AO Trauma Online Course—Basic Principles of Fracture Management Essentials is an online asynchronous course, meaning that learners individually access and complete the course modules online at their own pace within a given timeframe.
Before the launch of this new online course in July, a successful pilot was conducted with 100 nominated participants from all AO Trauma regions (see blue box at the bottom of this article for details and results of the pilot).
The first online course was offered from July 16–August 31 to 250 international participants on a first-come-first-served basis. It was filled within a week. The evaluation of this first course was even better than the pilot.
An important value proposition was the access to international faculty and participants, and thus the feeling of being part of a larger AO Trauma community.
Several participants signed up for this course despite having taken the face-to-face course previously. For these participants, the online course was seen as a recap and reinforcement of their previously gained knowledge, and an opportunity to learn different aspects from international faculty.
Based on participant feedback and evaluation of the first courses, the enhancements for release 2.0 of the course will include formative and summative assessments, as well as synchronous online activities. Future courses will offer participants greater interactivity and options within the course. The next AO Trauma Online Course—Basic Principles of Fracture Management Essentials events are planned for the fourth quarter of this year.
As part of the AO Davos Courses 2020, two online courses for residents will be offered on basic and advanced principles of fracture management. These courses will be purely online courses with precourse online tasks and three live, synchronous online sessions on December 4–6.
Vincenzo Giordano (Brazil), chairperson of the online advanced course, explains the course goals. "We plan to focus on specific topics as it is not feasible to cover 100 percent of what we intended for a face-to-face event. The main goal of this course will be to spark participants' and faculty interest before and during the three-day event. We know that it is not so easy to keep an international group of learners engaged so that they are motivated to stay logged in for four hours during three consecutive days,” he says. “We are preparing dynamic, real-time online activities which will hopefully help us to keep our participants motivated and engaged throughout the course."
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Before the launch of the AO Trauma Online Course—Basic Principles of Fracture Management Essentials, a pilot was conducted in a controlled environment to evaluate the online course in terms of accessibility, engagement, and relevance.
The pilot was run with 20 nominated participants from each AO Trauma region and was continuously monitored and evaluated with regards to participant engagement, questions, and technical issues.
The evaluation results were very positive and encouraging. The overall impact, content relevance, and learning objectives scored highly, with a 100 percent recommendation rate.
Participants supported this new initiative and provided constructive feedback:
