The main objective of the APO is to promote undergraduate and postgraduate training for professionals working in our field – otoneurology. To this end, regular conferences are organised, meetings hosted by various hospital departments are sponsored, we collaborate with foreign counterparts, and our website publishes relevant articles by national and international authors and reports on matters deemed relevant.
Organising meetings is costly and requires support from the pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries, support which is becoming increasingly scarce and limited. The presence of their representatives at scientific meetings allows, for example, for contact and demonstrations of new equipment and techniques. However, the added value of face-to-face meetings, apart from the educational value of the scientific programmes for participants, lies in the interaction between participants themselves and between them and the invited opinion leaders. For all these reasons, conferences are essential.
However, in recent years there has been a proliferation of conferences which, whilst on the one hand providing an incentive for younger researchers to present scientific papers and greater visibility and prestige for the organising institutions, on the other hand reduce the funding available. This has led to a situation of financial difficulties in organising national congresses for virtually all medical societies, which are funded primarily by participants’ registration fees; these difficulties necessitate considerable financial juggling and strict control over expenditure.
Learning has always been based on the dichotomy between the teacher/trainer and the pupil/trainee, making use of teaching methods that have evolved over time, from papyrus to new information technologies, notably the Internet. In other words, teaching has become possible via distance learning, through the use of various types of platforms with different capabilities – such as those reaching a larger or smaller number of participants – platforms that allow speakers, even those located on different continents, to be brought together virtually and simultaneously on each trainee’s computer screen. Each trainee, from wherever they choose and without having to travel, attends the lectures – accompanied by videos, graphics, PowerPoint presentations, etc. – and is able to interact with the speakers, almost as if it were face-to-face teaching. All this is achieved without the organisers incurring any costs for hiring venues, which would otherwise accommodate the traditional conference audience.
Of course, we are a long way from what asynchronous e-learning enables – as exemplified by our Functional Exploration Course for University Entrance Exams – or from the excellence of the communication skills of certain speakers, who sometimes move around the room, themselves fostering significant interaction with the audience, but videoconferences used as synchronous e-learning and webinars are, at present – given the well-known public health restrictions, which are set to continue indefinitely, and the financial constraints they inevitably entail – increasingly the order of the day. It is important that scientific societies, universities and the Medical Association play a role in validating these initiatives. It is one thing to engage in marketing; it is quite another to provide ethically and scientifically sound teaching of the subjects in question. This type of distance learning is certainly not the pedagogical method of choice, as it is essentially expository, but it achieves the objectives of teaching and learning in a more cost-effective manner.
We are living in a time when we have suddenly found ourselves faced with challenges for which we are seeking appropriate solutions. As far as education in general is concerned, new paradigms are emerging, or solutions that were thought to have been consigned to history are being revived. At this point, we must focus on distance learning and, ideally, on asynchronous e-learning courses. We must balance costs and benefits, keeping in mind what matters most – teaching to facilitate learning, as effectively as possible, using the resources available.
That’s the challenge.
