Beyond brick and mortar: Staying connected in post-pandemic blended learning environments.

These are certainly unprecedented times, and the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic has turned many ideas about teaching and learning in medical education on their head. Who would have thought that, overnight, brick and mortar universities would be providing education solely through digital means? This form of radical change comes along perhaps once in a lifetime, and currently, we have not seen the full fallout, or the potential benefits from the sudden and dramatic shift in medical education. More than a year later, we still find ourselves telecommuting in front of our screens: teaching, supervising and assessing.

Who would have thought that overnight, brick and mortar universities would be providing education solely through digital means?

Digital working and learning environments bring with them a host of affordances, availability and accessibility being among the most obvious. However, if anything, the changes brought about by the pandemic have been a long time coming. For more than a decade, medical education institutions have endeavoured to transform pedagogy by downsizing lectures; flipping the classroom; implementing novel technology to replace laboratories; and invoking active self‐directed and self‐paced independent learning activities. These developments in medical education can be set against the broader backdrop of advances in society at large and a push towards the digitisation of core societal functions. The emergence of e‐learning, artificial intelligence and learning analytics is often presented as offering unbounded possibilities and a grand narrative of modernity that resonate with the rhetoric of techno‐romanticism. , But, what happens when medical education migrates into digital environments? What is gained and what is lost?

Developments in medical education can be set against the broader backdrop of advances in society at large.

It is widely acknowledged that becoming a healthcare professional to a great extent involves developing a sense of belonging and identify with the healthcare professional community. It is also recognised that medical education institutions need to provide students with a vocational orientation to foster this sense of belongingness and identify. Developing a sense of belonging requires close proximity to learning environments and peers. But, how can we provide such opportunities in digitised learning environments? The paper by Van der Meer et al in this issue of Medical Education is, therefore, a timely and an important contribution. The authors illuminate how students’ perception of belongingness is central to their learning, and how a Sense of Community (SoC) needs to be encouraged, shaped and continuously sustained in communities when physical interaction is no longer possible. It is further articulated that it is not only what we do in class that matters, but also, the things students and teachers do in‐between class counts, as one student puts its; ‘I like to walk downstairs after a discussion group. Then the chitchat starts’. Van der Meer and colleagues encourage us to consider the long‐term impact of migrating to digital forums, as well as how we might best organise communal learning experiences.

But, what happens when medical education migrates into digital environments? What is gained, and what is lost?

So, where do we go from here? Eringfeld recently postulated that the post‐coronial universities will need to strongly consider blended approaches to education, that adequately and flexibly merge virtual and face‐to‐face teaching environments to cater for the diverse needs of learners while, at the same time, accommodate a sense of context and community. In order to create such shared communities, medical education institutions may have to consider key and interrelated dimensions of learning: the cognitive, the emotional and the social.  While cognitive dimensions of learning have always been recognised as central to the acquisition of knowledge and skills, a broader corpus of research is beginning to exhibit the importance of students’ emotions in their learning processes. Consequently, providers of medical education must also consider the social dimension of learning as an important bridge to the emotional. The social dimension of learning involves interaction with others through participation, communication and cooperation. It is about introducing learners into the ways of being and becoming and adopting, the values and norms of unique social, cultural, practical or vocational traditions.

A sense of belongingness and the development of a professional identity may very well depend on emotional and social dimensions of learning.

A sense of belongingness and the development of a professional identity may very well depend on emotional and social dimensions of learning. In such situations, students need to be given opportunities not only to take part in professional communities, to observe and imitate role models and to ‘act’ as future professionals, but also to grab a cup of coffee and blow off some steam after a heavy lecture. As we move towards post‐pandemic learning environments, one of the challenges ahead lies in identifying ways of interacting on campus, as well as in blended learning contexts.

One of the challenges ahead lies in identifying ways of interacting on campus, as well as in blended learning contexts.