The EL-COVID project is now completed. For inquiries, please contact the primary investigator, Dr Nikolaos Patelis.
How it started
The EL-COVID survey is an initiative of Dr Nikolaos Patelis. During the pandemic, Dr Patelis has attended a number of online training and educational activities and he was surprised by the different approaches to e-Learning taken by institutions and companies around the world. It was apparent that there are lessons to be learned from the COVID-19 related e-Learning boom.
Aims
The EL-COVID survey aims in identifying the weaknesses of vascular e-Learning during the COVID pandemic and assess the overall value of this kind of training from the users point of view.
Methods
The EL-COVID survey is based on an anonymised 18-point questionnaire consisting of 3 simple demographic questions, 13 multiple-choice questions, 1 open question and a field for e-mail addresses of those who are willing to share their address in order to further validate their participation and our results.
Eligible to participate are all vascular surgeons, endovascular surgeons and vascular trainees from all countries. In those countries where vascular surgery is not a distinct specialisation, eligible to participate are the surgeons performing most of the vascular procedures.
This questionnaire will be open for submissions for a period of four months starting June 15th, 2020.
The questionnaire will be actively shared through social media by the investigators and collaborators of the EL-COVID survey. For countries with a small number of vascular surgeons, only one national collaborator will be appointed, where larger vascular national societies might have more than one collaborators. Collaborators are free to choose how to share the invitation to the original link. Invitations and social media shares can be translated to any language, but all replies will be collected in English through the original questionnaire.
In mainland China, colleagues should use a mandarin-english version of the questionnaire to access the survey, as Google tools are not available in the country.
Copies of the questionnaires are available at http://med-pie.com//el-covid-survey/el-covid-english.pdf (English version) and http://med-pie.com//el-covid-survey/el-covid-chinese-english.pdf (Mandarin-English version).
Definitions in this research:
* The pandemic period is defined as the period between March 15th and May 15th, 2020 for Europe. This period may slightly vary according to imposed measures by each government and epidemiological data from each region.
* A vascular e-Learning activity or distance learning activity is defined as any educational or training activity that is performed exclusively online (either synchronous or asynchronous) and the main topic falls under vascular or endovascular disciplines.
Results:
Results will be published in an international journal in English. All collaborators will be listed. Those who have participated in the writing of the manuscript and/or the data analysis will be listed as co-authors.
Results are now published and links to full texts are available here.
Investigators:
Primary investigator is Dr Nikolaos Patelis and a full list of the Collaborators is available here.
Funding:
None of the participants has received any funds from any source (commercial or other)
Disclosures:
Nikolaos Patelis & Sean Matheiken: served as Directors of ESVS Distance Learning; co-founders of the Med-PIE group
Harm Ebben: served as Video Editor of ESVS Distance Learning
Hubert Stepak: served as ESVS Distance Learning Fellow
Theodosios Bisdas: CEO of Vascupedia
Zaiping Jing & Jiaxuan Feng: Endovascology, PR China
GDPR:
The survey is anonymised.Those who decide to share their email address with the EL-COVID team, do it only for validation purposes and all emails will be deleted once the final results are published. By sharing their email address, participants consent to their data being recorded and reviewed by our team. No data will be shared with third parties. Responsible data officer is Dr Nikolaos Patelis. All participants who have willingly given their email addresses, can request their record to be deleted at any time as per GDPR rules (check here for easy to understand explanation of GDPR).
Disclaimer:
Med-PIE supports this project by hosting this page for free. This is based on a voluntary non-commercial agreement, that does not bind neither Med-PIE nor EL-COVID survey team in any legal or commercial manner.
Map of participation (After data validation):
Supporters:
