How to impart scientific knowledge and writing skills? Digital education in the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: In order to make a virtue out of necessity by establishing a digital teaching curriculum in ORL during the Covid-19 pandemic, we created the concept of a new digital scientific seminar. In this study, we present the students’ evaluation of the seminar focusing on digital and scientific skills acquisition. MethodsWe included 265 students in our prospective monocentric questionnaire study. The seminar started with an introduction on the criteria of a good publication, followed by the individual task of understanding the publication on a main ORL topic and writing its abstract. After the seminar students completed the evaluation questionnaire. ResultsOverall results showed that students rated the seminar well. Free-text comments added that although live teaching was preferred, students found their digital and scientific competence increased through the task of writing a publication abstract on their own. Conclusion Digital education was not only rated well, but satisfied the students’ wish for digital transformation and likewise fulfilled the national goals of competence-based education. Digital competence and skills convey data literacy in medical education and scientific education.