Flipped Classroom – A New Learning Concept for Medical Students in Otolaryngology

While e-learning becomes more popular in teaching, face-to-face learning environments are still most commonly used in medical education. Moreover, existing e-learning concepts are rarely fully integrated into the curriculum. Within undergraduade medical education curricula, ENT topics have limited teaching hours, although core topics of ENT and the practical skills involded are important for many other disciplines in medicine. Our aim was to improve the quality of medical education by using modern integrated teaching concepts like the flipped classroom (FC). After independent studies of a giving topic, students work through problem-solving exercises at in-class lectures.

To develop our FC structure, we created videos containing information e.g. about the clinical ENT-specific examination. For medical students of the Ruhr-University Bochum we implemented an interactive curriculum for practical courses and lectures according to the FC principle. The newly developed teaching concept has been extensively evaluated.

Evaluations of 67 students (13 male, 54 female, average age 24.9) were included in the study. 88% rated the concept of the lecture as good after having attended the FC, 69% felt well prepared, 65% reported using the e-learning program frequently. The provided videos were rated by an average of 1.82. The evaluation showed consistently high satisfaction rates for quality and content of the practical courses.

After consequently implementing a flipped classroom in our curriculum, we experienced the new concept to be a suitable strategy to compete against previous restricted otolaryngologic teaching in undergraduate medical education. Previous evaluations results showed a high satisfaction rate of the participating students.

Publication History

Publication Date:
18 April 2018 (online)