Emerging Faculty Needs for Enhancing Student Engagement on a Virtual Platform

Abstract

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic health professions education, the world is living a major disruptive change and technology is being used abruptly to maintain teaching and learning. Face to face sessions have been replaced by virtual online lectures, the same occurred to small group tutorials, which have been replaced by interactive webinars. It is of paramount importance to acknowledge the role of technology and the presence of various applications and programs which facilitate this paradigm shift from face to face to virtual learning. The main challenges which face medical and other health colleges are the needs to train faculty members to heavily use technology in education and converting their materials to suite various online platforms. In addition, there is a great need to enhance students engagement in online learning to overcome the imposed physical barriers, which is not the case in face to face learning. The aim of this opinion piece is to draw light on the new needs for faculty development associated with digital transformation and the need for enhancing students engagement on a virtual platform.