Abstract
Abstract
Collaboration between several College of Medicine departments, including the library, resulted in a creation of a new service for faculty during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. By combining efforts, support for teaching online became a united effort and much less daunting for faculty, who could consult one group for online teaching support, rather than three or four different entities. The resulting endeavor led to a website FAQ and consulting email address that is accessible to all faculty to provide focused and timely technology and education assistance to faculty.
Introduction
The nationwide pandemic arising from the rapid spread of COVID-19 has been one of the greatest challenges to education in a long time. In March of 2020, essentially all education in the United States moved to being entirely online.1 Medical education was not excepted from this rapid transition. Academic and medical school faculty were required to pivot both content and teaching methods to an online video platform, such as Webex (https://www.webex.com/) or Zoom (https://www.zoom.us/).2
At most medical schools, including the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, while lectures are often recorded so that students can return to listen to content as necessary, instruction traditionally has not been delivered solely electronically. Prior to the pandemic, faculty in medical education used traditional in-person teaching methods, including lecture, small group learning, case-based studies, fishbowl, read/see/do, etc.3–5 However, most faculty had not previously taught a solely virtual class.
Upon the announcement of the close of the physical college, the decision that in 4 days’ time the faculty would be teaching online only elicited a major reaction. Faculty bombarded communication channels with a common question: “How does one teach using Zoom?” The Harrell Health Sciences Library (HHSL) was able to move quickly to provide the necessary training to help instruction to move forward digitally in the College of Medicine.
Case study
The Penn State College of Medicine quickly needed to adapt from instruction dependent on face-to-face methods to an entirely remote-based model. The school announced on Friday, March 13th, that all instruction would move online as of Monday, March 16th, and that the campus would be closed. Multimedia specialists in the HHSL took the opportunity to hold workshops for faculty, staff, and students to help make the transition easier on everyone.
Before the shutdown, the library had held regular training sessions over the previous year on the basic skills of hosting a Zoom meeting, such as how to schedule a Zoom session, sharing a screen, assigning privileges and roles, as well as starting and monitoring breakout rooms. These sessions averaged ten to twenty people in attendance. On the Friday of the announcement, the library held an emergency lunchtime Zoom session with attendance of over one hundred participants. To supplement the recording, handouts and a copy of the presentation were published as a LibGuide on the library website.6 Additional viewers later watched the recording of the session, with 227 guide views between March 13 and May 13, 2020.
Almost immediately following the emergency training session, the inboxes of library multimedia staff were flooded with questions, such as “Why can’t I open the session I scheduled?,” “How can I post the recorded session for my students to watch later?,” and “Would you host the session for me?” It was clear that the volume of incoming questions exceeded the capacity of the staff to provide answers in a timely manner. The library then learned that other departments were fielding similar questions–and an idea formed.
The Harrell Health Sciences Library put out a call to collaborate with members of the Department of Medical Education, the Woodward Center for Excellence in Health Sciences Education (https://sites.psu.edu/mededtech), and Information Services (IT), to form the Educational Technology Team (EdTech). Each of the nine team members of the team possessed different areas of knowledge, allowing the team to respond quickly to requests and to create high-quality resources (see Table 1). Areas of focus included, but were not limited to, teaching with Zoom, asynchronous instruction using Canvas, technology support for remote instruction, recording and editing multimedia, and creating eLearning modules.
Table 1. Knowledge and expertise of EdTech team, Pennsylvania State University, Harrell Health Sciences Library and College of Medicine.
An email address for the EdTech team was created to triage questions, and a promotional email was sent out to all faculty. Since all team members could see queries as they came in, any member available at the time who had knowledge on a question could respond. This team surveillance method resulted in rapid response times—usually within one hour, and always within 24 h. Typically, one member triaged the question to whomever was most familiar with that specific technology or software (Table 1). The EdTech team responded to many (more than 200 during March through July) requests to help faculty facilitate Zoom sessions, to make sure they were recorded, and to assist with break-out rooms and other features of the platform. This volume of requests and the resulting activities would have been overwhelming for an individual, but the group was able to divide the work equitably in a way that did not overburden anyone.
As patterns emerged in the types of emails the team received, the next objective became to create an “information hub” for answers to common questions. One of the library’s multimedia specialists used content assembled by the team to publish a new website with FAQs and links to resources for remote teaching and content creation.7 The site was constructed using Penn State’s WordPress affiliated site builder to facilitate quick editing and updating by multiple administrators. The site’s content was divided into two sections: general instructional principles and available technology. Information on the site was tailored to the needs of the College of Medicine by highlighting specific apps and resources available to the campus, such as Zoom, Kaltura, Adobe Creative Cloud, Poll Everywhere, strategies for online teaching, etc. Topics covered in the FAQs ranged from how to blend asynchronous and synchronous learning activities to how to use a whiteboard in online instruction.
Once the link to the site was distributed, users were able to browse the FAQs for their concerns, view the associated resources, and then email the EdTech team with any follow up questions. This further streamlined the process of efficiently providing needed information to instructors as they transitioned to remote teaching. The collaboratively created website and shared email address also facilitated greater cohesion and reduced redundancy in the types of answers instructors received, since all team members were aware of shared resources and of what information others on the team were recommending.
The support provided by HHSL has also evolved to include helping the Department of Continuing Education to hold webinars in lieu of the in-person conferences. The webinars have been presented to local school nurses and physical trainers in the Hershey community for Continuing Education credits. The library provides scheduling the webinars in Zoom, consulting on the best practices, training presenters (panelists), holding practice sessions, and acting as a host for the live webinar, all while training representatives from the Department to host their own webinars going forward.
Conclusion
The opportunity to collaborate with other departments and to offer a new service is one that libraries should be ready to seize. This particular collaboration has allowed the library to gain recognition for its staff’s knowledge in technology as well as in educational methods and ideology. For some faculty, the realization of the skill sets of the library staff not only is new, it will also encourage them to seek library services they might not have considered before. By leveraging its expertise and resources in a crisis, the library was able to move quickly to support the educational mission of the institution and to build bridges along the way with departments and individuals.
| Team member | Role and expertise |
|---|---|
| Multimedia specialist 1, Library | Provides support and teaches faculty and staff on educational technology. Very familiar with Zoom, Kaltura, Canvas, video editing, Adobe Creative Cloud products, and remote education |
| Multimedia specialist 2, Library | Provides support and creates educational materials for faculty and staff. Very familiar with Articulate Storyline, Zoom, Kaltura, Canvas, Adobe Creative Cloud products |
| Associate Dean, Office of Medical Education, College of Medicine | Knows the needs of students and faculty, and helps faculty with professional development |
| Representative—Woodward Center, Penn State-Harrisburg | Well-versed in Canvas and Zoom. Woodward Center offers expertise in health science education best practices. |
| Instructional Designer—Woodward Center | Knows the resources available to faculty, works closely with faculty, and knows Zoom, Canvas, Poll Everywhere |
| Systems Analysts (2)—Information Services | Very familiar with Mediasite and Zoom from an IT perspective |
| Education Program Specialist, College of Medicine | Familiar with medical curriculum, pedagogy, and educational resources |
| Instructional Designer, College of Medicine | Very familiar with Articulate Storyline, Zoom, Canvas, Compass |
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the work and collaboration of Nancy Adams, Librarian for Education and Instruction, Harrell Health Sciences Library and Assistant Dean, Foundational Sciences, for Penn State University College of Medicine.