Polishing the teaching of affective domain in online education

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the overall education system in general and medical education in particular. While the cognitive and psychomotor domains were regularly taught in most medical schools, the affective domain was mostly left to informal teaching through role modelling. With the switch to online teaching, the dynamics of role modelling has changed, and the students do not observe their clinical teachers communicating with patients and colleagues. Therefore, the affective domain now needs to be taught more explicitly than ever to inculcate empathy, integrity, motivation, confidence, communication, time management, teamwork, advocacy, and respect. The five levels of affective domain namely; receiving, responding, valuing, organising and characterisation, can be taught to some extent. This paper describes the different strategies which can be utilised for online education for each level of the affective domain, and help students learn valuing emotions of others, that is an essential attribute required by a competent physician.