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Exploring medical educators’ readiness and the priority of their educational needs for online teaching

Purpose This study investigated medical educators’ readiness for online teaching by exploring their perceived ability and importance of online teaching competencies and identified the highest priority of their educational needs. Methods In this study, 144 medical education faculty members from a university were invited to participate. The faculty online teaching readiness scale was virtually distributed at the end of the spring semester of 2020 and 38 faculty members responded for 2 weeks. The collected data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, paired t-tests, Borich Needs Assessment, and the Locus for Focus model. Results The overall average perceived ability was 2.76, while the overall average perceived importance was 3.36. The course design and the technical competency categories showed the highest and lowest educational needs, respectively. Five competencies were given the highest priority of educational needs. Conclusion The results revealed that the medical educators are not ready for online teaching; thus, urgent educational needs for online teaching competencies exist.


Introduction
In the light of the rapidly evolving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, universities worldwide are going online [1]. However, this urgent imperative to move online has raised significant challenges for medical educators who normally deliver their courses in traditional face-to-face mode. Online teaching involves different skill sets from those commonly required in traditional classrooms [2]. Thus, medical educators' readiness for online teaching has become important.
Online educators' readiness can be defined as their preparedness for online teaching [3,4]. Their preparedness plays a critical role in the process of transition to online learning environments and is described as one of the most influencing factors on students' online learning experience [2]. Martin et al. [4] suggested that online teaching readiness can be examined by instructors' perception of attitude and ability for online teaching competencies. Attitude refers to a person's viewpoint about something and its relevance; thus, instructors' attitude toward online teaching is reflected on their perception of importance [4]. The perception of the ability refers to their perceived capacity to successfully perform online teaching [4].
How online instructors perceive the importance or ability of online teaching competencies varies by contexts. Martin et al. [5] compared American and German online instructors' online teaching readiness and reported that overall American instructors rated the competencies higher both in the perception of importance and ability. This result indicates that the characteristic or experience of the faculty is likely to impact their perception of online teaching. Instructors accustomed to lecturing in a traditional classroom may perceive competencies associated with instructional design, such as planning, organizing, and structuring course components, as more important, or instructors who are new to online learning environments may need to feel comfortable with technology [6].
Assessing faculty readiness based on their perception of the ability and importance of online teaching competencies can also provide important information to identify developmental areas or educational needs for faculty development programs. Online instructors' educational needs can be defined as a discrepancy between their importance and ability levels of the competencies [7]. Training and supporting faculty members are routinely noted as essential for the successful implementation of online education [8]. It is critically important that when faculty members are asked to re-design their course to an online format, they receive appropriate training. However, a study reported that 19% of the online instructors in 2,500 college and universities in the United States have no training programs for online teaching [4,9]. Furthermore, faculty development programs should focus on developing proficiencies in developmental areas of teaching competencies based on online teaching readiness assessment. Many institutions, however, use a one-size-fits-all approach without systematical assessment about their educational needs [8]. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning is no longer a choice. A significant need exists for systematically assessing medical educators' online teaching readiness and educational needs as well as training them; however, very few studies have focused on this important issue [3].
Therefore, this study aims to explore medical educators' online teaching readiness and their educational needs. Their online teaching readiness will be explored by faculty members' perception of the importance and ability of online teaching competencies. It also aims to identify the online teaching competencies with the highest priority of educational needs using both Borich Needs Assessment [7] and the Locus for Focus model [10]. The findings from this study will provide important implications for medical educators who assess At the spring semester of 2020, the university decided to conduct online classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instrument
The online survey consisted of two parts: demo-

Medical educators' educational needs
The educational needs assessment results are seen in Table 2. First, the overall mean difference between ratings of ability and importance is 0.60, which is statistically significant. All the subcategories also revealed significant mean differences. All the items, excluding three, exhibited significant differences as well.

Discussion
The purpose of this study was mainly twofold. The first was to assess the online teaching readiness of medical educators and the second was to identify the highest priority of their educational needs. The results reveal that they are not ready for online teaching in terms of their attitude and ability for online teaching, which is similar to that of studies reporting that faculty members with little to no online teaching experience have lower perceptions of their ability in online teaching than those with more than 5 years of online teaching experience [4]. This result indicated that online teaching was literally thrust upon medical educators without any proper preparation and there is an urgent training need for online teaching competences. are "create an online course orientation," "write measurable learning objectives," "apply copyright law and fair use guidelines when using copyrighted materials," and "apply accessibility policies to accommodate student needs." The second highest priority items are "designing learning activities," "create and modulate discussion forum," "provide feedback and respond to students promptly," and "use facilitation strategies to