Designing LAMS templates for medical education Bronwen Dalziel School of Medicine University of Western Sydney

eLearning in Medicine Technology friendly –course management –information and content –simulation –specialist content websites and journals

eLearning in Medicine

Medical education units –course development –course management

Changes in medical education Undergraduate (5-6 year course) Graduate (4 year course) Rapidly changing –Less years –More content –Disease understanding changing fast –More pharmaceutical choices Problem based learning tutorials

Years 3 to 4 - Clinical rotations Hospitals, specialist clinics, general practice clinics, community health services Different rotations occur simultaneously Clinical education by clinicians onsite Scientific basis of disease lectures back on campus Not always relevant to current rotation

Medical education - postgraduate Adult learning –Increasing research into diseases –Increasing use of evidence based medicine –‘Out of hours’ learning –Online learning provided by specialist colleges, e.g. RACGP

Medical education Flexible content delivery Adult learning skills Online learning

Background to UWS medicine New school of medicine First intake of students year undergraduate degree –2 years on campus –3 years of clinical rotations New curriculum = opportunities for innovation

UWS Medicine - Yrs 3 to 5 Placed on clinical rotations Scientific basis of medicine course –online –9 modules –3 modules must be completed per year Conference weeks twice a year

Online modules Medical education learning principles* –Active learning –Relates to real life problems –Self-directed learning –Reflection opportunities 25 hours of content = 5 cases of 5 hrs each Log-in through vUWS (Web CT) Written by content experts –Clinicians and scientific experts in relevant field * Kaufman D.M. (2003) ABC of learning and teaching in medicine: applying educational theory in practice. BMJ 326:213-6

Online modules Learning design templates –a sequence of activities that represent a learning style for that module Content experts not elearning experts Examples of possible activities Uniformity / quality between modules Good pedagogical design

Decision to use LAMS LAMS can present activities as a scaffolded learning design –students must complete tasks before moving on to next task (common in PBL style) –WebCT interface allows students to skip ahead WebCT unable to share learning design templates –Sequences of activities cannot easily be exported, shared or re-used

Learning design templates Presented at a curriculum workshop Made available through a word document

Challenges My vision vs content expert vision Waiting to see some content –Modules for use in 2009 Hard to access content experts as they are mostly off campus Content want to include lots clinical diagnostic steps Need for more scientific content

Early outcomes Positive response to LAMS –Visual representation of learning design –Drag and drop features of Authoring –Preview feature of student view (iterative development of content) Most want to work within LAMS rather than in in a word document Training of personal assistants and junior staff (e.g. registrars)

Reflections Process is iterative Content experts need more training than expected - using it more LAMS a space for discussion and development of content Templates should improve efficiency of content development for future content experts