Evaluation of Video Presentation to Deliver Surgical Anatomy Teaching

Title Evaluation of Video Presentation to Deliver Surgical Anatomy Teaching

Authors Walsh I.K., Boohan M., Dorman A.

Objectives To evaluate the efficacy of newly introduced video presentation to deliver Surgical Anatomy teaching to undergraduate medical students.

Design and Setting Qualitative and quantitative study using questionnaires and focus groups, employing students undertaking the perioperative medicine module of the phase 4 undergraduate medical curriculum at Queen’s University Belfast.

Outcome Measures To determine:
(1) if video presentation is effective in delivering surgical anatomy teaching,
(2) student’s learning preferences regarding this teaching method.
Results The questionnaire response rate was 89% (216 of 244 students; female: male ratio 1.25) and 42 students participated in 6 focus groups. Mean questionnaire responses indicated a favourable opinion on quality assurance items, with a mixed response to video presentation as a learning method. 71% of students preferred to receive a lecture in person, rather than via video presentation. There were no statistically significant differences between genders regarding learning preferences in general and regarding video versus live presentation in particular. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated that favourable responses to video presentation were strongly associated with perceived audiovisual quality and learning preferences (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient 0.77), with 72% of students considering video presentation worthwhile. Positive perception of overall quality was strongly associated with learning preferences as well as more generic quality assurance issues (80% students; alpha coefficient 0.83).
The results were supported by triangulation of the above quantitative data with qualitative data generated by the focus groups. Students further articulated the view that video presentation may be more appropriate and effective in a mixed method setting.

Reference Basu Roy R, McMahon GT. Video-based cases disrupt deep critical thinking in problem-based learning. Med Educ 2012 Apr;46(4):426-435.

Evaluation of Multidisciplinary Delivery of Surgical Anatomy Teaching

Title Evaluation of Multidisciplinary Delivery of Surgical Anatomy Teaching

Authors Walsh I.K., Taylor S.J., Dorman A, Boohan M.

Objectives To evaluate the efficacy of newly introduced multidisciplinary methods to deliver Surgical Anatomy teaching to undergraduate medical students.

Design and Setting Qualitative and quantitative study using questionnaires and focus groups, employing students of the perioperative and emergency medicine (POEM) module of the phase 4 undergraduate medical curriculum at Queen’s University Belfast.

Outcome Measures To determine:
(1) if multidisciplinary teaching is effective in delivering surgical anatomy teaching,
(2) student’s learning preferences regarding this teaching method.
Results The questionnaire response rate was 89% (216 of 244 students; female: male ratio 1.25) and 42 students participated in 6 focus groups. Mean questionnaire responses indicated a favourable opinion on quality assurance items and multidisciplinary teaching. 81% of students agreed that multidisciplinary teaching enhanced learning and 86% felt that this did not adversely affect interaction. A positive contribution towards POEM learning was reported for Radiology (95% of students), Anatomy (93%) and Surgery (78%). The benefits of multidisciplinary teaching were congruent for Anatomy, Radiology and Surgery with 78% of students indicating a perceived favourable association with learning. Multidisciplinary teaching was not associated with diluted interaction, with 62% of students describing interaction as sufficient. 88% of students positively ranked tutor characteristics of enthusiasm and encouragement as being strongly associated with teacher quality. Positive perception of overall quality was strongly associated with learning preferences as well as more generic quality assurance issues (80% students; alpha coefficient 0.83).
The results were supported by triangulation of the above quantitative data with qualitative data generated by the focus groups. Whilst students frequently misunderstood the meaning of “multidisciplinary teaching”, there was an appreciation of the method’s worth; students recognised and valued the relevance of Anatomy, Radiology and Surgery teaching to POEM learning. The importance of vertically integrating Anatomy into all stages of the undergraduate curriculum was especially recognised.

Reference Aarnio M, Nieminen J, Pyorala E, Lindbolm-Ylanne S. Motivating medical students to learn. 2010 Med Teach;32(4):199-204.

Precision Teaching in IV Fluid Prescribing and Patient Safety

OBJECTIVES: Precision Teaching (PT) has been shown to be an effective intervention to assess teaching method effectiveness and evaluate learning outcomes. SAFMEDS (Say All Fast Minute Every Day Shuffled) are a practice/assessment procedure within the PT framework to assist learning and fluency. We explored the effects of a brief intervention with PT, to impart high frequency performance in safe intravenous fluid prescription in a group of final year undergraduate medical students.
METHODS: 133 final year undergraduate medical students completed a multiple choice question (MCQ) test on safe IV fluid prescription at the beginning and end of the study. The control group (n= 76) of students were taught using a current standardized teaching method. Students allocated to the intervention arm of the study were additionally instructed on PT and the use of SAFMEDS. The study group (n = 57) received 50 SAFMEDS cards containing information on the principles of IV fluid prescription scenarios. These students were trained/tested twice per day for 1 minute.
RESULTS: Interim analysis showed that the study group displayed an improvement in fluency and accuracy as the study progressed. There was a statistically significant improvement in MCQ performance for the PT group compared with the control group between the beginning and end of the study (35% vs 15%).
CONCLUSION: These results suggest PT employing SAFMEDS is an effective method for improving fluency, accuracy and patient safety in intravenous fluid prescribing amongst undergraduate medical students.

Design and Practice in Architectural Theory Education

Benefiting from design in theory learning is not common in architecture schools. The general practice is to design in studio and to theorise in lectures. In the undergraduate module History and Theory in Architecture II at Queen’s University Belfast, students attend interactive lectures, participate in reading group discussions, design TextObjects, and write essays. TextObjects contain textual, audio and/or graphic representations that highlight a single concept or a complex set of issues derived from readings. Students experiment with diverse media, such as filmmaking, photography, and graphic design, some of which they experience for the first time. Lectures and readings revolve around theories of architectural representation, media and communication, which are practiced through TextObjects. This is a new way to link theory and practice in architectural education. Through action research, this study analyses this innovative teaching method called TextObject, which brings design and practice into architectural theory education to stimulate students towards critical thinking. The pedagogical research of architectural theoretician Necdet Teymur (1992, 1996, 2002) underlies the study.

Using debate to teach pharmacy students about ethical issues

Objective. To create, implement, and evaluate debate as a method of teaching pharmacy undergraduate students about ethical issues.

Design. Debate workshops with 5 hours of contact with student peers and facilitators and 5 hours of self-study were developed for second-year pharmacy students. Student development of various skills and understanding of the topic were assessed by staff members and student peers.

Assessment. One hundred fifty students completed the workshops. The mean score for debating was 25.9 out of 30, with scores ranging from 23.2 to 28.7. Seventy percent of students agreed that the debates were a useful teaching method in the degree program.

Conclusion. A series of workshops using debates effectively delivered course content on ethical issues and resulted in pharmacy students developing skills such as teamwork, peer assessment, communication, and critical evaluation. These findings suggest that pharmacy students respond favorably to a program using debates as a teaching tool.

Perspectives of an international education initiative in children's palliative care

Education is viewed as central to improving future palliative care for children and families across all countries. International education initiatives will ensure practitioners are aware of global health issues and can provide culturally sensitive care. Creative and innovative means of meeting such directives are required to achieve meaningful student learning. This paper focuses on one innovation, a children's palliative care workshop using case studies as a teaching method, with nursing students from the USA and nursing and midwifery students from the UK. Key learning points arising from student evaluation were recorded under three main themes, these were: differences across countries, similarities across countries, and making learning fun and memorable. Findings indicated that this joint learning activity was viewed positively by all students and has enabled them to learn with and from each other, potentially impacting on their future practice.

Developing Entrepreneurial Skills in Pharmacy Students

Objective. To create, implement, and evaluate a workshop that teaches undergraduate pharmacy
students about entrepreneurship.
Design. Workshops with 3 hours contact time and 2 hours self-study time were developed for final-year
students. Faculty members and students evaluated peer assessment, peer development,
communication, critical evaluation, creative thinking, problem solving, and numeracy skills, as well
as topic understanding. Student evaluation of the workshops was done largely via a self-administered,
9-question questionnaire.
Assessment. One hundred thirty-four students completed the workshops. The mean score was 50.9
out of 65. Scores ranged from 45.9 to 54.1. The questionnaire had a response rate of 100%. Many
students agreed that workshops about entrepreneurship were a useful teaching method. Additionally,
they agreed that key skills were fostered.
Conclusion. Workshops effectively delivered course content about entrepreneurship and helped
develop relevant skills. This work suggests students value a program that includes instruction on
entrepreneurship.

Strange, But True? Object-oriented Programming Is Best Taught, And Learnt, While Sitting On The Floor.

There is a perception amongst some of those learning computer programming that the principles of object-oriented programming (where behaviour is often encapsulated across multiple class files) can be difficult to grasp, especially when taught through a traditional, didactic ‘talk-and-chalk’ method or in a lecture-based environment.
We propose a non-traditional teaching method, developed for a government funded teaching training project delivered by Queen’s University, we call it bigCode. In this scenario, learners are provided with many printed, poster-sized fragments of code (in this case either Java or C#). The learners sit on the floor in groups and assemble these fragments into the many classes which make-up an object-oriented program.
Early trials indicate that bigCode is an effective method for teaching object-orientation. The requirement to physically organise the code fragments imitates closely the thought processes of a good software developer when developing object-oriented code.
Furthermore, in addition to teaching the principles involved in object-orientation, bigCode is also an extremely useful technique for teaching learners the organisation and structure of individual classes in Java or C# (as well as the organisation of procedural code). The mechanics of organising fragments of code into complete, correct computer programs give the users first-hand practice of this important skill, and as a result they subsequently find it much easier to develop well-structured code on a computer.
Yet, open questions remain. Is bigCode successful only because we have unknowingly predominantly targeted kinesthetic learners? Is bigCode also an effective teaching approach for other forms of learners, such as visual learners? How scalable is bigCode: in its current form can it be used with large class sizes, or outside the classroom?

The Teaching Space Allocation Problem with splitting

A standard problem within universities is that of teaching space allocation which can be thought of as the assignment of rooms and times to various teaching activities. The focus is usually on courses that are expected to fit into one room. However, it can also happen that the course will need to be broken up, or ‘split’, into multiple sections. A lecture might be too large to fit into any one room. Another common example is that of seminars or tutorials. Although hundreds of students may be enrolled on a course, it is often subdivided into particular types and sizes of events dependent on the pedagogic requirements of that particular course. Typically, decisions as to how to split courses need to be made within the context of limited space requirements. Institutions do not have an unlimited number of teaching rooms, and need to effectively use those that they do have. The efficiency of space usage is usually measured by the overall ‘utilisation’ which is basically the fraction of the available seat-hours that are actually used. A multi-objective optimisation problem naturally arises; with a trade-off between satisfying preferences on splitting, a desire to increase utilisation, and also to satisfy other constraints such as those based on event location and timetabling conflicts. In this paper, we explore such trade-offs. The explorations themselves are based on a local search method that attempts to optimise the space utilisation by means of a ‘dynamic splitting’ strategy. The local moves are designed to improve utilisation and satisfy the other constraints, but are also allowed to split, and un-split, courses so as to simultaneously meet the splitting objectives.

Evaluation of the contribution of theatre attendance to medical undergraduate neuroscience teaching - a pilot study.

Introduction: Medical students often attend the neurosurgical theatre during their clinical neurosciences attachment. However, few studies have been performed to objectively assess the value of this theatre-based learning experience. The main aim of this study was to explore student perceptions on the contribution of neurosurgical theatre attendance to clinical neuroscience teaching.

Materials and Methods: Third-year medical students undergoing their 2-week clinical neurosciences rotation at the Royal Hospitals Belfast were invited to participate in this study. A multi-method strategy was employed using a survey questionnaire comprising of closed and open-ended questions followed by semi-structured interviews to gain a greater 'in-depth' analysis of the potential contribution of neurosurgical theatre attendance to neuroscience teaching.

Results: Based on the completed survey responses of 22 students, the overall experience of neurosurgical theatre-based learning was a positive one. 'In-depth' analysis from semi-structured interviews indicated that students felt that some aspects of their neurosurgical theatre attendance could be improved. Better preparation such as reading up on the case in hand and an introduction to simple theatre etiquette to put the student at ease (in particular, for students who had never attended theatre previously), would improve the learning experience. In addition, having an expectation of what students are expected to learn in theatre making it more learning outcomes-based would probably make it feel a more positive experience by the student.

Conclusions: The vast majority of students acknowledged the positive learning outcomes of neurosurgical theatre attendance and felt that it should be made a mandatory component of the curriculum.

An accelerated method of developing DBT projects using CDIO partner institutions as parallel processors

The cycle of the academic year impacts on efforts to refine and improve major group design-build-test (DBT) projects since the time to run and evaluate projects is generally a full calendar year. By definition these major projects have a high degree of complexity since they act as the vehicle for the application of a range of technical knowledge and skills. There is also often an extensive list of desired learning outcomes which extends to include professional skills and attributes such as communication and team working. It is contended that student project definition and operation, like any other designed product, requires a number of iterations to achieve optimisation. The problem however is that if this cycle takes four or more years then by the time a project’s operational structure is fine tuned it is quite possible that the project theme is no longer relevant. The majority of the students will also inevitably experience a sub-optimal project experience over the 5 year development period. It would be much better if the ratio were flipped so that in 1 year an optimised project definition could be achieved which had sufficient longevity that it could run in the same efficient manner for 4 further years. An increased number of parallel investigators would also enable more varied and adventurous project concepts to be examined than a single institution could undertake alone in the same time frame.
This work-in-progress paper describes a parallel processing methodology for the accelerated definition of new student DBT project concepts. This methodology has been devised and implemented by a number of CDIO partner institutions in the UK & Ireland region. An agreed project theme was operated in parallel in one academic year with the objective of replacing a multi-year iterative cycle. Additionally the close collaboration and peer learning derived from the interaction between the coordinating academics facilitated the development of faculty teaching skills in line with CDIO standard 10.

A study to evaluate the introduction of simulation as a teaching strategy for the mental health and learning disability fields of nursing, in an undergraduate nursing curriculum within one higher education institution

High Fidelity Simulation or Human Patient Simulation is an educational strategy embedded within nursing curricula throughout many healthcare educational institutions. This paper reports on an evaluative study that investigated the views of a group of Year 2 undergraduate nursing students from the mental health and the learning disability fields of nursing (n = 75) in relation to simulation as a teaching pedagogy. The study took place in the simulation suite within a School of Nursing and Midwifery in the UK. Two patient scenarios were used for the session and participants completed a 22-item questionnaire consisting of three biographical information questions and a 19-item Likert scale. Descriptive statistics were employed to illustrate the data and non-parametric testing (Mann-Whitney U test) was employed to test a number of hypotheses. Overall students were positive about the introduction of patient scenarios using the human patient simulator into the undergraduate nursing curriculum. This study used a small, convenience sample in one institution and therefore the results obtained cannot be generalised to nursing education before further research can be conducted with larger samples and a mixed-method research approach. However these results provide encouraging evidence to support the use of simulation within the mental health and the learning disability fields of nursing, and the development and implementation of further simulations to complement the students’ practicum.

A self-learning teaching-learning based optimization for dynamic economic/environmental dispatch considering multiple plug-in electric vehicle loads

Economic and environmental load dispatch aims to determine the amount of electricity generated from power plants to meet load demand while minimizing fossil fuel costs and air pollution emissions subject to operational and licensing requirements. These two scheduling problems are commonly formulated with non-smooth cost functions respectively considering various effects and constraints, such as the valve point effect, power balance and ramp rate limits. The expected increase in plug-in electric vehicles is likely to see a significant impact on the power system due to high charging power consumption and significant uncertainty in charging times. In this paper, multiple electric vehicle charging profiles are comparatively integrated into a 24-hour load demand in an economic and environment dispatch model. Self-learning teaching-learning based optimization (TLBO) is employed to solve the non-convex non-linear dispatch problems. Numerical results on well-known benchmark functions, as well as test systems with different scales of generation units show the significance of the new scheduling method.

How should teaching on whole person medicine, including spiritual issues, be delivered in the undergraduate medical curriculum in the United Kingdom?

Background

Although the General Medical Council recommends that United Kingdom medical students are taught ‘whole person medicine’, spiritual care is variably recognised within the curriculum. Data on teaching delivery and attainment of learning outcomes is lacking. This study ascertained views of Faculty and students about spiritual care and how to teach and assess competence in delivering such care.

A questionnaire comprising 28 questions exploring attitudes to whole person medicine, spirituality and illness, and training of healthcare staff in providing spiritual care was designed using a five-point Likert scale. Free text comments were studied by thematic analysis. The questionnaire was distributed to 1300 students and 106 Faculty at Queen’s University Belfast Medical School.

351 responses (54 staff, 287 students; 25 %) were obtained. >90 % agreed that whole person medicine included physical, psychological and social components; 60 % supported inclusion of a spiritual component within the definition. Most supported availability of spiritual interventions for patients, including access to chaplains (71 %), counsellors (62 %), or members of the patient’s faith community (59 %). 90 % felt that personal faith/spirituality was important to some patients and 60 % agreed that this influenced health. However 80 % felt that doctors should never/rarely share their own spiritual beliefs with patients and 67 % felt they should only do so when specifically invited. Most supported including training on provision of spiritual care within the curriculum; 40-50 % felt this should be optional and 40 % mandatory. Small group teaching was the favoured delivery method. 64 % felt that teaching should not be assessed, but among assessment methods, reflective portfolios were most favoured (30 %). Students tended to hold more polarised viewpoints but generally were more favourably disposed towards spiritual care than Faculty. Respecting patients’ values and beliefs and the need for guidance in provision of spiritual care were identified in the free-text comments.

Students and Faculty generally recognise a spiritual dimension to health and support provision of spiritual care to appropriate patients. There is lack of consensus whether this should be delivered by doctors or left to others. Spiritual issues impacting patient management should be included in the curriculum; agreement is lacking about how to deliver and assess.

How using Technology Enhanced Learning could help modernise traditional large group teaching or Lecturing.

The efficiency of lecturing or large group teaching has been called into question for many years. An abundance of literature details the components of effective teaching which are not provided in the traditional lecture setting, with many alternative methods of teaching recommended. However, with continued constraints on resources large group teaching is here to stay and student’s expect and are familiar with this method.

Technology Enhanced Learning may be the way forward, to prevent educators from “throwing out the baby with the bath water”. TEL could help Educator’s especially in the area of life sciences which is often taught by lectures to engage and involve students in their learning, provide feedback and incorporate the “quality” of small group teaching, case studies and Enquiry Based Learning into the large group setting thus promoting effective and deep learning.