This was my first Annual Scholarship Meeting and I was unsure what to expect. The first session I attended was by Erin Fillmore, who described how students can draw and build interactive devices as a way of helping learn complex anatomy. The students built an abdominal wall, and then pulled a testicle through the different abdominal wall layers to understand the descent of the testicle. As a urology trainee, this was a warm welcome and it was also the start of my deep dive into technology enhanced learning.

I heard from Alex Harbourne and Nader Raafat about ‘Klark’, a software designed to simulate history-taking. Using this software, students could list their differential diagnosis and type questions to virtual patients confirming or refuting their diagnosis. Shaunna Kelly described how a virtual patient could also be used to improve disclosure of medical error using impressive branching logic to allow multiple response options to support learners.

However, one comment from the audience highlighted that the level of input to construct these virtual patients was huge. They questioned whether the learning benefit justified the time required to develop the resource.

In the E-learning session, the participants explored why these sorts of technologies are now necessary. A huge volume of teaching materials have been delivered online during the COVID-19 pandemic, and online learning may stay. However, the participants described that attention spans are shorter, and it can be difficult to pay attention to long didactic teaching sessions. I had to learn a large volume of material for my surgical membership exams during the COVID-19 pandemic and found it easy to switch off during long monologues. I was also guilty of falling asleep during lectures while at medical school on more than one occasion, despite being on the keener end of the student spectrum. In the E-learning session, Charles Moore described how technology could complement a flipped classroom approach to avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’. The flipped classroom consisted of a ‘YouTuber’ format—10-minute, high production quality, engaging, didactic teaching on YouTube—followed by another session where students could discuss and consolidate their learning.

The first time I took a history from a patient was as a first-year medical student. We were instructed to take a social history from a patient in pairs—but I had no idea what to ask. I turned to my colleague, and they were equally clueless, so we simply had a chat with the patient instead. If we had seen a short video on history taking and had the opportunity to practice our history taking on a virtual patient with prompts at home beforehand, my learning experience when I approached real patients could have been far more productive.

Supplementing our teaching styles with technology to keep our students engaged requires an extra time commitment, but I would argue it is worthwhile—because no one is learning anything if they are asleep.

No conflicts of interest or funding to declare.