really good stuff
Correspondence: Suvam Paul, Division of Educational Quality and Analytics, New York University School of Medicine, 545 First Avenue, 6-R, New York, New York 10016, USA. Tel: 00 1 212 263 9519; E-mail: [email protected] doi: 10.1111/medu.12723
Using Twitter to teach problem-based learning Rumana Lasker & Nirosa Vicneswararajah What problems were addressed? Providing highquality teaching whilst balancing clinical commitments raises problems that are commonly experienced within hospitals in which clinicians are relied upon to deliver teaching to undergraduate medical students. In view of the added difficulty imposed by the expectation that students will complete an everincreasing number of assignments within the same timeframe, this balance is becoming harder to manage. At our district general hospital (DGH), students were given an increased number of problembased learning (PBL) cases to complete within their 3-month placements. Junior doctors were assigned 1 hour per week, depending on their clinical commitments, to facilitate PBL sessions. The added burden of having to complete more cases led us to use an innovative approach to optimise the method by which we delivered PBL tutorials in order to ensure our students received the best teaching. What was tried? Social media has been gaining steady support for its introduction into medical education, with Twitter being singled out as a key platform for possible integration into teaching. Considering this, we set up a Twitter account to work as an adjunct to our classroom-based PBL sessions. All PBL tutors were given access to a single account through which PBL was facilitated. In the week preceding the scheduled PBL session, students were asked to post their learning objectives for the upcoming case to the PBL Twitter account. Tutors would then review these and post a summary, adding learning points as appropriate. Over the week, students were encouraged to post useful links, papers, research and diagrams that were used to achieve these objectives. They were also able to post questions to tutors. During classroom-based sessions held at the end of the week, the Twitter feed was displayed and used as a reference point whilst the case was discussed. This pilot was run over 8 months and analysed in a focus group discussion. What lessons were learned? Overall we found the pilot to be beneficial to our teaching. The class-
room-based sessions were run more efficiently and effectively as both students and tutors were already familiar with the content of the case through the discussion on Twitter. We were able to spend more time discussing the learning points and focus on the conditions highlighted by the cases. Questions posted earlier in the week had either already been answered via Twitter (by both students and tutors) or were re-addressed in the tutorial. In some cases, questions were retweeted to consultants within specialties for more extensive answers, thus broadening participation in the cases. We also found that students felt their student–tutor relationships to have benefited from the account, with tutors perceived as more approachable both in person and online. It is worth noting that the need to reply to tweets can impose an increased demand on the tutor’s time outside the scheduled tutorials. However, as this can be done at the tutor’s leisure, it was not considered a hindrance. On the whole, the pilot was deemed to be successful in alleviating the teaching burden imposed on faculty staff by the increase in PBL assignments.
Correspondence: Rumana Lasker, Medical Education, Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, Hamstel Road, Harlow CM20 1QX, UK. Tel: 00 44 7595 164990; E-mail: [email protected] doi: 10.1111/medu.12717
The Virtual Human in team-based learning: assessing students’ perceptions Cristiane Comparin, Günter Hans-Filho, Chao Lung Wen & Ernesto A Figueiro´-Filho What problem was addressed? Team-based learning (TBL) is a learner-centred, instructor-directed strategy for small-group active learning in largegroup educational settings. When TBL is conducted correctly, students’ performances are equivalent or improved in comparison with those in either lecture-based learning or more traditional small-group learning models.1 However, few studies have been published on the insertion of innovative audiovisual tools in the TBL context. The Virtual Human Project (Projeto Homem Virtual [http://www.projetohomemvirtual.com.br]) is described as comprised of powerful sequences of three-dimensional (3-D) computer graphics video of the human body that aid learning by facilitating
ª 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. MEDICAL EDUCATION 2015; 49: 513–541
531
Copyright of Medical Education is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Correspondence: Suvam Paul, Division of Educational Quality and Analytics, New York University School of Medicine, 545 First Avenue, 6-R, New York, New York 10016, USA. Tel: 00 1 212 263 9519; E-mail: [email protected] doi: 10.1111/medu.12723
Using Twitter to teach problem-based learning Rumana Lasker & Nirosa Vicneswararajah What problems were addressed? Providing highquality teaching whilst balancing clinical commitments raises problems that are commonly experienced within hospitals in which clinicians are relied upon to deliver teaching to undergraduate medical students. In view of the added difficulty imposed by the expectation that students will complete an everincreasing number of assignments within the same timeframe, this balance is becoming harder to manage. At our district general hospital (DGH), students were given an increased number of problembased learning (PBL) cases to complete within their 3-month placements. Junior doctors were assigned 1 hour per week, depending on their clinical commitments, to facilitate PBL sessions. The added burden of having to complete more cases led us to use an innovative approach to optimise the method by which we delivered PBL tutorials in order to ensure our students received the best teaching. What was tried? Social media has been gaining steady support for its introduction into medical education, with Twitter being singled out as a key platform for possible integration into teaching. Considering this, we set up a Twitter account to work as an adjunct to our classroom-based PBL sessions. All PBL tutors were given access to a single account through which PBL was facilitated. In the week preceding the scheduled PBL session, students were asked to post their learning objectives for the upcoming case to the PBL Twitter account. Tutors would then review these and post a summary, adding learning points as appropriate. Over the week, students were encouraged to post useful links, papers, research and diagrams that were used to achieve these objectives. They were also able to post questions to tutors. During classroom-based sessions held at the end of the week, the Twitter feed was displayed and used as a reference point whilst the case was discussed. This pilot was run over 8 months and analysed in a focus group discussion. What lessons were learned? Overall we found the pilot to be beneficial to our teaching. The class-
room-based sessions were run more efficiently and effectively as both students and tutors were already familiar with the content of the case through the discussion on Twitter. We were able to spend more time discussing the learning points and focus on the conditions highlighted by the cases. Questions posted earlier in the week had either already been answered via Twitter (by both students and tutors) or were re-addressed in the tutorial. In some cases, questions were retweeted to consultants within specialties for more extensive answers, thus broadening participation in the cases. We also found that students felt their student–tutor relationships to have benefited from the account, with tutors perceived as more approachable both in person and online. It is worth noting that the need to reply to tweets can impose an increased demand on the tutor’s time outside the scheduled tutorials. However, as this can be done at the tutor’s leisure, it was not considered a hindrance. On the whole, the pilot was deemed to be successful in alleviating the teaching burden imposed on faculty staff by the increase in PBL assignments.
Correspondence: Rumana Lasker, Medical Education, Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust, Hamstel Road, Harlow CM20 1QX, UK. Tel: 00 44 7595 164990; E-mail: [email protected] doi: 10.1111/medu.12717
The Virtual Human in team-based learning: assessing students’ perceptions Cristiane Comparin, Günter Hans-Filho, Chao Lung Wen & Ernesto A Figueiro´-Filho What problem was addressed? Team-based learning (TBL) is a learner-centred, instructor-directed strategy for small-group active learning in largegroup educational settings. When TBL is conducted correctly, students’ performances are equivalent or improved in comparison with those in either lecture-based learning or more traditional small-group learning models.1 However, few studies have been published on the insertion of innovative audiovisual tools in the TBL context. The Virtual Human Project (Projeto Homem Virtual [http://www.projetohomemvirtual.com.br]) is described as comprised of powerful sequences of three-dimensional (3-D) computer graphics video of the human body that aid learning by facilitating
ª 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. MEDICAL EDUCATION 2015; 49: 513–541
531
Copyright of Medical Education is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
