This feature is part of our Paramedic Chief Digital Edition, a regular supplement to SA国际传媒.com that brings a sharpened focus to some of the most challenging topics facing paramedic chiefs and EMS leaders everywhere. To read all of the articles included in the Spring 2017 issue, click here.
By Kelly Grayson
I鈥檝e been an EMS educator for 24 years, and in those 24 years, I鈥檝e developed a pretty effective schtick. I鈥檓 good at breaking down complex concepts into easily understood terms. I can switch gears from inspirational to educational to entertaining and back again, all within the same lecture. I can read an audience with the best of them, and adapt my teaching methods on the fly. I can make an audience laugh or cry. I firmly believe that the most effective learning occurs between bouts of laughter.
As I like to say in my lectures, 鈥淲e鈥檒l reserve you a whole seat, but you鈥檒l only need the edge.鈥
And very little of that was useful to me in a virtual classroom.
As the EMS Education Coordinator for ACE4EMS, the educational wing of the , my job for the past year has been to develop curricula and teaching materials for our initial and continuing EMS education programs. We make extensive use of the internet for virtual, instructor-led training and the flipped classroom model. We utilize a hybrid classroom, a combination of live instruction and self-paced online study. Using the internet allows us to greatly expand our educational footprint, beaming our classes to multiple sites and agencies simultaneously.
In a flipped classroom, students do their classwork at home and their homework in class. Rather than have an instructor impart medical facts in the classroom, and then have the student go home and try to apply those facts in EMS practice, the flipped classroom allows our students to pursue knowledge acquisition at home at their own pace, via their preferred learning methods. In class, we focus on knowledge synthesis and application.
In fact, that鈥檚 what we call our live classes: knowledge integration sessions. We do a lot of team-based and scenario-based learning, rather than 鈥渄eath by PowerPoint.鈥
And it works 鈥 very well.
Virtual educator growing pains and lessons
But there have been some hiccups along the way; I thought I鈥檇 share some of the growing pains, pearls and pitfalls we鈥檝e encountered.
1. Not every student buys in, even among millennials
It takes a disciplined student to do a constant stream of assignments and projects at home, and then come to class prepared to discuss what we鈥檝e learned. Every EMS educator stresses to their students that homework and reading the material beforehand is essential to classroom success. However, we all know that in a traditional classroom students can often get away with taking notes or mindlessly highlighting passages in their textbook while you lecture. It isn鈥檛 ideal, but often, it鈥檒l pass.
This does not work in a flipped classroom. If students don鈥檛 do their study assignments, they鈥檙e going to be utterly lost in the live class. If you use this model as an educator, strict enforcement of assignment deadlines is essential. Weight scoring for self-study assignments reflects their importance.
Even some of the students who are conscientious about doing their assignments aren鈥檛 going to like the flipped model. As one student said to me, 鈥淚t feels like I鈥檓 getting cheated. You鈥檙e supposed to teach me, and I鈥檓 supposed to learn. Here, I鈥檓 just teaching myself.鈥
At the time, he had the highest grade in the class, and he admitted that he scored much better in my hybrid classroom than he ever had in any traditional learning environment. He passed his NREMT psychomotor exam on the first try, and passed his computer exam in 70 questions. But, at heart, he was a passive learner, and just wanted to memorize the information necessary to get the certification required by his employer.
2. You鈥檒l need an entirely different set of skills
When you鈥檙e not looking directly at your audience, it鈥檚 almost impossible to read the mood of the room. In a live classroom, you can change pace and keep things interactive with students by using a question-and-answer format and later mixing in scenarios.
But in an internet webcast, it鈥檚 much harder. Question and answer just leads to long stretches of dead air, and three-quarters of your students are probably furiously Googling the answer instead of thinking.
Instead, use polls and surveys to gauge student comprehension. They鈥檙e much more interactive, and there are a number of inexpensive plugins available that you can use in your webcast platform.
I can easily hold a classroom鈥檚 attention for an hour or more if I鈥檓 talking to them face-to-face. In an internet classroom, it gets boring easily. Keep PowerPoint lectures, if you must do them, to no more than 30 minutes.
You鈥檒l need to make much more extensive use of multimedia in a virtual classroom. Use videos and photos to illustrate your teaching points.
In return, you鈥檒l need more classroom prep. In a live class, I know my material well enough that if you give me 10 minutes to cull the fat from my slide deck and insert a few videos, I can teach on the fly with little planning. This isn鈥檛 the case in a virtual classroom. You鈥檒l need every bit of that 鈥渢hree-hour prep for every one hour of lecture鈥 standard, if not more.
3. You鈥檒l have to abandon your old classroom paradigm
But that鈥檚 not necessarily a bad thing. In a traditional classroom, having students focused on their tablets, smartphones or laptops is considered rude. In a hybrid class, it鈥檚 almost a necessity. We have the sum total of human knowledge available at the click of a mouse, so why not use it?
I have quoted medical studies in class and struggled to remember the exact statistics, and had students pull up the relevant research while I was talking about it. I鈥檝e also had students pull up contradictory studies and challenge me on certain positions. Isn鈥檛 that what we want in our students -- critical thinkers who do not accept dogma at face value?
Allowing personal data devices in your classroom can tremendously enrich the experience, but you have to remain vigilant. For every critical thinker who is engaged in the discussion, there is a slug who is surfing Amazon or updating his Facebook status while you talk. Some VILT platforms allow the instructor to remotely view a student鈥檚 desktop, or even activate his webcam. In live class, patrol the classroom frequently to make sure the students are staying on task, and have a written policy in place on use of electronic devices in the classroom.
Even such mundane policies as attendance are turned upside down in the hybrid or virtual classroom. We鈥檝e all had the adult student who couldn鈥檛 get a babysitter on a particular class day or someone who was ill and couldn鈥檛 attend class because he was contagious. In a virtual classroom, I鈥檝e had students attend from their living rooms, cars, ambulances and even airplanes while on vacation. One particularly dedicated fellow even attended from his hospital room. Moreover, I record all of my live classes and post the videos on the learning management system. This way, students can go back and review later or make up a class they missed.
4. It need not be expensive
In fact, if you use Google Hangouts and a free online learning management system like , it can even be free. For any virtual classroom, you鈥檒l need to address three needs: deliver content, obtain feedback and evaluate comprehension. There are numerous web conferencing platforms that will allow you to do all three. Higher end webcasting platforms, such as , have greater functionality, but inexpensive options like or aren鈥檛 exactly drawing on a cave wall with a Mastodon bone.
You鈥檒l need, at minimum, a stable broadband internet connection at each end. Avoid satellite internet; too much latency for interactive discussions and bandwidth restrictions make videos unworkable.
You鈥檒l need a good videoconferencing omnidirectional microphone on your end, and your students logging in remotely will need a decent microphone/speaker headset, both of which can be acquired for under $30. Discourage your students from using their built-in laptop speakers and microphone, because background noise and feedback can become quite distracting.
In a similar vein, ask your students to mute their personal microphones unless they are speaking. Of all the elements of an interactive webcast 鈥 audio, video and graphics 鈥 audio is by far the most important. Audio quality can make or break a webcast.
If you need to deliver content, but don鈥檛 require live interaction, a simple narrated PowerPoint lecture makes an effective computer-based teaching assignment. I use a PowerPoint plugin called iSpring (roughly $900) that integrates testing and quizzes into my PowerPoint lectures, and imports grades to my learning management system. Not only will it grade quizzes, but I can also set it to require a certain amount of time to be spent viewing the slides, or a minimum number of slides to be viewed; there鈥檚 no skipping straight to the post-test unless I enable it.
Using the internet can broaden the reach of your classroom and make EMS education a richer, more interactive experience for your students. By avoiding some of my mistakes, I hope that you can utilize distance education to the benefit of your students and the communities you serve.
About the author
Kelly Grayson, NRP, CCEMT-P, is a critical care paramedic in Louisiana. He has spent the past 24 years as a field paramedic, critical care transport paramedic, field supervisor and educator. He is president of the Louisiana Society of EMS Educators and a board member of the LA Association of Nationally Registered EMTs.
He is a frequent EMS conference speaker and contributor to various EMS training texts, and is the author of the popular blog . Kelly鈥檚 books are available on his . You can follow him on Twitter () or , or email him at . Kelly is a member of the .
This article, originally published on July 17, 2017, has been updated.