Table 3 Action steps to sustain upsides in face to face / distance learning in post COVID-19 era

1-Annual study of percentage of face to face to distant learning in the course report

2-Continuous faculty development (communication skills, presentation skills, mentorship, teaching strategies, student engagement)

3-Strategy for promotion that includes star points on FD courses

4-Continuous appraisal using peer evaluation and CQI

5-Include an evaluation question related to the quality of the relationship with faculty fostered by distance learning and a question about the quality of the student teacher relationship

6-Satisfaction survey annually for students of special needs

7-Increase interactivity of classrooms through (Monitoring of teaching strategy through periodic surveys)

8-Add a survey quarterly for students testing; satisfaction with educational equity

9-Ensure that curricula contain collaborative assignments

10-Peer feedback on group work before delivery of output

11-Teacher of the year nomination

12-Increase social activities (1 annual trip and 2 annual fun days)

13-Continuous monitoring of group activities in classrooms (number, quality efficiency)

14-Increase Clinical skills session performed in F2F to more than 50% of the f2f encounters

15-Encourage f2f communication skills sessions to be a part of the core course requirements

16-Annual analysis of OSCE station results

17-Annual revision of the course report section on teaching methods and issuing a report on the degree of creativity in utilizing existing tools

18-Annual feedback forms containing a question for student about the quality of the tools used in the classrooms

1-Add a survey question to test the acceptability of software used annually

2-Committee responsible for testing and benchmarking applications used for DL and making decisions on what to use

3-Assess hospital incident reports annually and issue a report

4-Activate university auditing systems to ensure proper use of the given tools (quality assurance unit audit)

5-Perform a grade variant analysis annually for student exams and map them topic scores to the teaching method used

6-Set guidelines for attending virtual classrooms and synchronous distance teaching to allow for better utilization of time saved on commuting

Faculty development program (technical)

7-Survey of available special needs facilities in the university

8-Monitor analytics quarterly for: attendance rate, assignment submission, mean scores in formative exams

9-Continuous maintenance and improvement of LMS,

10-Back up learning resources