Comparison of an Emergency Medicine asynchronous learning platform usage before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a retrospective analysis (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic challenged medical educators due to social distancing. Podcasts and asynchronous learning platforms help distill medical education in a socially distanced environment. Medical educators interested in providing asynchronous teaching should know how these methods performed during the pandemic. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to assess the level of engagement for an emergency medicine (EM) board review podcast and website platform, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We measured engagement via website traffic, including such metrics as visits, bounce rate, unique visitors, and pageviews. We also evaluated podcast analytics, which included total listeners, engaged listeners, and number of plays. METHODS Content was designed after the American Board of EM Model, covering only one review question per episode. Website traffic and podcast analytics were studied monthly from two time periods of 20 months each, pre-pandemic (July 11, 2018, to February 31, 2020) and during the pandemic (May 1, 2020, to December 31, 2021). March and April 2020 data were omitted from the analysis due to variations in closure at various domestic and international locations. Results underwent statistical analysis in March 2022. RESULTS 132 podcast episodes and 93 handouts were released from July 11, 2018, to December 31, 2021. Mean number of listeners/podcast increased significantly from 2.11 to 3.77 (t test, P CONCLUSIONS During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was increased engagement for our EM board review podcast and website platform over a sustained period, specifically through website visitors and number of podcast plays. Medical educators should be aware of the increasing usage of web-based education tools, and that asynchronous learning is favorably viewed by learners. Limitations include inability to view Spotify analytics during the study period, and confounding factors like increased popularity of social media inadvertently promoting the podcast.