Alice in the digital wonderland-pediatric teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic A survey and comment of the Teaching Working Group of the German Society of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (DGKJ)

The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rapid switch from undergraduate classroom teaching to online-teaching; a challenging process for teachers and students. Based on a recent online survey among German pediatric university hospitals the AG Lehre der DGKJ (teaching working group of the German Society of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine) summarizes latest experiences with e-learning during the summer term of 2020. The survey participants from 17 pediatric university hospitals report that the large spectrum of e-learning formats could sufficiently replace classical lectures and seminars but could not fully replace teaching involving direct contact to patients. The introduction of new digital teaching formats is time-consuming, needs high-quality IT infrastructure, should be embedded in a continuous curriculum and provide the possibility of regular exchange between students and teachers. Teachers should be provided with the opportunity for training in didactic methods and IT skills. These results correspond to the literature on e-learning in general and undergraduate medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic in particular. The experiences summarized here should not only facilitate the development of e-learning tools during the ongoing pandemic but also stimulate to establish e-learning as a valuable component of future pediatric medical education. New digital substitutes for teaching involving pediatric patients need to be developed. The statement was drafted by consensus by the German Society of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine Working Group on Teaching and approved by the DGKJ board