Strategies of Digitized Learning

Abstract

The development of digital strategies in teaching is based on the technological progress of the last decades, but also on the strong motivation to focus a didactic concept on the learning individuals. The available data of German medical faculties indicate that digital teaching concepts currently play a subordinate role in medicine in general and specifically in otorhinolaryngology. By assessing data of our own institution, we could demonstrate that the majority of medical students refer mainly to material handed out by the lecturers as single source of information for learning Otorhinolaryngology. Therefore, the application of sound digital teaching strategies provides special chances, in particular in otorhinolaryngology to cope with the excessive amount of online information from partly unclear sources. Currently, the possible degree of digital teaching reaches from digital service supply via punctual provision of classic teaching concepts and blended learning up to completely digital curricula. The attractiveness of curricular integration of digital teaching strategies is less based on the utilization of merely technological progress, but rather on the variety of applying innovative curricula and new didactic concepts. Depending on the intended teaching purpose, the flipped classroom and the virtual reality seem to have a particularly high potential, while mobile learning is already established in individual practice. Testing and evaluating digital teaching innovations for concrete scenarios currently belongs to the most important scientific challenges of digital teaching concepts. Today, the nationwide implementation of digital teaching in Germany is less impeded by technical conditions, but by missing financing because sponsoring is currently mainly performed with reference to concrete projects; in the context of permanent implementation, however, regular costs arise. To support these promising teaching concepts, the sponsoring of institutions for digital teaching with provision of hard- and software solutions at universities could contribute significantly. Establishing cooperation to use such digital platforms might lead to a high efficiency regarding the distribution with simultaneously profiting of savings potential.