Abstract
Purpose: A group of Arab-American physicians and researchers in the United States organized
a blended online course in academic writing and publishing in medicine targeting medical
students and physicians in war-torn Syria. This was an effort to address one of the
reasons behind the poor quantity and quality of scientific research papers in Syria
and the Arab region. In this paper, we report on the design, conduct, and outcome
of this course and attempt to evaluate its effectiveness. Methods: The educational intervention was a 2-month blended online course. We administered
a questionnaire to assess satisfaction and self-reported improvement in knowledge,
confidence, and skills of academic writing and publishing. Results: The course succeeded in reaching more than 2588 physicians and medical students from
the region; 159 of them completed most of the course. Eighty-three percent of the
participants felt that they were confident enough to write an academic paper after
the course and 95% felt the learning objectives were achieved with an average student
satisfaction of 8.4 out of 10. Conclusion: Physicians in Syria and neighboring countries are in need of training to become an
active part of the global scientific community and to document and communicate the
crisis their countries are going through from a medical perspective. Low-cost online
educational initiatives help respond, at least partially, to those needs.
Keywords
Academic writing - Facebook - GoToWebinar - medical education - online course - online
learning - social media - YouTube
