eLearning in ICF

I'm sitting at a WHO ICF Reference Group meeting - and guess what... they are planning a eLearning curriculum for teaching the ICF.

And they also don't know ADDIE!  The poor guy.

Take a pole at the bottom

If you cannot take it anymore
If your backend is very sore
If the MPhil is evoking enormous rage
please take the pole at the bottom of this page...

Excellent article to use with ADDIE

An article appeared in the special e-Learning edition of the Medical Teacher earlier this year. It is a great resource to use in conjuction with ADDIE.

See the PDF on the Discussion Board on Blackboard.

AMEE guide 32: e-Learning in Medical Education

I would like to give you a quick summary of the AMEE Guide for e-Learning in Medical Education (Ellaway & Masters, 2008) – and apply it to the South African context.

The first part of the guide is an overview of e-learning, e-teaching and e-assessment for novices, while the second half of the guide focuses on the day-to-day issues of e-learning, looking both at theoretical concepts and practical implementation issues.

I’m not going to bore you with the e-learning-for-idiots part, but just highlight a few issues what I think is relevant to our situation. 

As I was reading through the AMEE guide, what struck me was the reference to two e-Learning paradigms: e-learning content vs. e-learning processes.

e-Learning content can be divided into, for example,  online course materials, e-books, e-library, commercial e-learning content (e.g. Apple health apps), plug-and-play plug-ins to WebCT and Blackboard, the internet as a whole (e.g. Google Scholar, Wikipedia), podcasts, vodcasts, RSS, etc.  One advantage of placing content online, is that it can be divided into chunks that can be reused for various courses and reduce duplication (e.g. one link for everyone if you use the same diagram in different modules).

e-Learning processes evolve over time, e.g. online discussions, chat, conferencing, e-assessment, e-portfolios, etc.  It also supports increasing the common outcomes or competency frameworks (e.g. CanMEDS) by cross-mapping the internal curriculum.  A potential great advantage of an e-Learning system is to develop and assess the longitudinal development of graduate attributes in students.  Unfortunately most e-courses are discrete courses and may not support tracking of curricula integration, sequencing patterns, etc.

The guide suggests that longitudinal e-portfolios may be the answer to develop and assess graduate attributes, through blogging, reflection, appended files, assessment, etc.  In our context it could mean that students are enrolled to a ‘Graduate Attribute’ e-module over a course of 6 years, compiling evidence of his/her growth in the key competencies needed to be a doctor in the 21^st century.

In our context the big challenge is to ensure that students take the development of the key competencies serious and that they are mature in self- and peer review.  This may be why a signature learning experience in the first year may be of importance: to lay the foundation from day one to equip freshmen with the competencies to develop graduate attributes and to develop a longitudinal e-Portfolio.

Sources:

Ellaway, R. & Masters, K. 2008. AMEE Guide 32: e-Learning in medical education. Part 1: Learning, teaching and assessment. Medical Teacher, 30:455-473

Wiley, D.A. (Ed.). 2000. The Instructional Use of Learning Objects [online]. Available: http://reusability.org/read [2011 October, 21].

e-Learning's strategic role in 21st century Health Sciences Education

In 1910 the Flexner Report on Medical Education in the United States and Canada (Flexner, 1910) was published. This led to major changes in medical education, such as the compulsory introduction of basic science to curricula. Today it is nearly unthinkable that hundred years ago anatomy, physiology, pathology and pharmacology, etc., weren’t necessarily part of a doctor’s education.  This major overhaul in health sciences education (HSE) contributed to the doubling of life expectancy during the previous century.

However, today, all is not well in HSE (Frenk, Chen, Bhutta, Cohen, Crisp, Evans, Fineberg, et al., 2010).  Recently three major publications* saw the light urging for major transformation in HSE to equip students with the competencies to effectively address the health needs of the twenty first century.  In one of these publications, Frenk et al. (2010), propose instructional reforms needed in HSE to enable equity in health through transformative learning and interdependence in education.  The strategic role of e-Learning and open educational resources (OER) is pivotal in this proposal to reform HSE.

In addition to this, Ellaway (2011) states that good evidence is needed to prove that e-Learning contributes to learning that will produce agents of transformation and urges the scholarship of e-Learning to be more critically engaged with the broader dimensions of technology use in medical education. In this, the involvement of students and faculty is needed throughout the design and implementation of new learning technologies (McGee & Kanter, 2011).

In my assignment I will take to this challenge by exploring the use of e-Learning as part of a blended learning approach to equip medical students with the knowledge, skills and character to effectively work in a healthcare team and to recognise and manage conflict appropriately. This initiative will take place in the Leadership and Health Management module, as part of the MBChB programme for fifth year medical students, at Stellenbosch University (SU).

Do you have any ideas how we can use innovative e-Learning technologies to cultivate and assess teamwork skills?

References:

*Frenk, J., Chen, L., Bhutta, Z.A., Cohen, J., Crisp, N., Evans, T., Fineberg, H., et al. 2010. Health Professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an inderdependent world. Lancet, 376:1923-1958.

Sandars, J. 2011. It appeared to be a good idea at the time but… A few steps closer to understanding how technology can enhance teaching and learning in medical education. Medical Teacher, 33:265-267.

Ellaway, R. 2011. E-learning: Is the revolution over?  Medical Teacher, 33:297-302.

McGee, J.B. & Kanter, S.L. 2011. How we develop and sustain innovation in medical education technology: Keys to success. Medical Teacher, 33:279-285.

Flexner, A. 1910. Medical education in the United States and Canada: a report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. New York: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Frenk, J., Chen, L., Bhutta, Z.A., Cohen, J., Crisp, N., Evans, T., Fineberg, H., et al. 2010. Health Professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an inderdependent world. Lancet, 376:1923-1958.

*Institute of Medicine. 2011. The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

*Interprofessional Education Collaborative Expert Panel. 2011. Core competencies for interprofessional collaborative practice: Report of an expert panel. Washington, D.C.: Interprofessional Education Collaborative.

eLearning module: my prototype prototype of learning intervention

I've been spending the past week to read some of the background articles on eLearning. To be honost, I've been involved in eLearning and eFundraising since 2003 on various fronts: in the NGO sector as consultant for UNICEF, MSF, CANSA and various other organisations, but never read an academic article about the topic. It is great to read and to learn the theory behind the practice, but it is very difficult not to fall asleep when you also have a nerwborn in the house - and where every minute of sleep is precious!

I'm struggling to find an appropriate project for this module.  I don't want to make it too big, because I also need time to finish my dissertation which must be finished by 10 November.

Please give me advise which project I should attempt:

1. To develop an longitudinal ePortfolio framework for students to record their own development in terms of the Faculty's graduate attributes for the duration of their studies. There is a big need to develop such a framework, allowing students to plan, reflect and  assess their own growth. I need to do this anyway for our Faculty within the next 6 months, but how far is far enough for this module. It may be too ambitious for the timeframe allowed.
2. An easier project  will be to reform the excisting eLearning module for students on their rural clinical rotation during their Middle Rotation.
3. Or to revise the eLearning Module for the Middle Rotation in Psychiatry.

Do you have any ideas.  JP, what do you think?