By Danish
Bhatti MBBS, MD.
Teachers Need Real
Feedback.
Most teachers love to teach but how do we tell
them where are they doing a good job and
where they can improve.
And how do you know when the learning has
occurred?
For proper learning student it is important to
understand what is learning and how is he learning. The burden of learning is
traditionally been on the student and the teachers considered it students fault
if they are lagging behind.
If we teach today’s
students as if we taught yesterday, we rob them of tomorrow – John Dewey
(Philosopher, Educator)
Clearly the traditional seminar-style teaching
has worked in the past and continues to work. Current suggestions are not
intended to challenge traditional teaching but only to build up on them. What
we are trying to understand what makes a great teacher, a great teacher and
what makes a good student, a really good student. What we are trying to say is that
every teacher can be a great teacher and every student can be a really good
student. Why should learning be a challenge. And that's where the online
teaching tools come into play. However adopting new methods of teaching is not
easy and requires a paradigm shift. It is not easy even in the developed
countries where education has been evolving constantly over the last two three
decades. At a survey in University of Nebraska Medical Center 74% of the
faculty are not comfortable In using technology at campus. And this number has
not changed in last 15 years.
Learning is not DONE to
students.
Learning is a PROCESS.
The Person who does the WORK does
the learning.
If we look at standard checklist for new
teaching methods such as flip learning there is little if any stress on the
technology to use for such methods rather its on a culture change. Such as
flexibility where teacher continually observe and monitor student to make
adjustments as appropriate and provide students different ways to learn content
rather than one single approach. Similarly there is focus on giving Stern
opportunities for activities or engagement and providing self-paced learning,
curating and creating relevant content for the student to use on their own,
interacting with students regularly understand their grasp of knowledge that is
formative assessment. (http://danishbhatti.com/?p=46)
Current education research highlights the
following 7
evidence-based principles of student center learning:
1. Students’ prior knowledge can help or
hinder learning.
2. How students organize, knowledge influences
how they apply knowledge.
3. Students Motivation determines what they do
to learn.
4. To develop mastery, students must acquire
component skills, practice integrating the and know when they can apply what
they have learned. Mastery= skills + Practice + Application
5. Goal-directed practice coupled with
targeted feedback enhances quality of student learning. Learning Goal, students
need to know the specific learning goal (objective).
6. Students current level of development
interacts with climate of the course to impact learning.
7. To become self-directed learners’ students
must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning.
USING
ONLINE EDUCATION FOR RESIDENTS
To explore the benefit of using complement of
online education for residents training we developed a short five week course
on movement disorder in form of Blended learning. Residents were scheduled to
receive once a week educational movement disorders for 5 weeks in traditional
didactics Is a single 12 hour lecture once a week. We developed an online
course to compliment that we clear that you're using our learning management
system platform of
CANVAS. A learning management system (LMS) is an online platform that offers various tools to provide education using above mentioned principles. A LMS provides the flexibility of self paced learning and benefits of formative assessments to guide the learning in an interactive way. It provides the flexibility of various learning approaches to the same group. It offers detailed insight into student performance and reports their involvement and activity.
CANVAS. A learning management system (LMS) is an online platform that offers various tools to provide education using above mentioned principles. A LMS provides the flexibility of self paced learning and benefits of formative assessments to guide the learning in an interactive way. It provides the flexibility of various learning approaches to the same group. It offers detailed insight into student performance and reports their involvement and activity.
Neurology residents participated in a 5-week
blended learning course including traditional face-to-face weekly lecture and
online materials using Canvas learning management system. Coursework included
weekly modules with required and optional reading material, task assignments (such
as mind map, memory matrix), formative quizzes, discussion forums, twitter
feeds and podcast. Course performance was evaluated with blinded pre-test and
post-test questionnaire. Of 16 residents 15 completed pre-test and 11 completed
post-test for evaluation.
There were 5777 online page views over 5 weeks
(mean 385/resident, range 32-1319). Residents made 167 submissions with timely
submission rate of 55% (CI 37-73, range 0-100%), completed 5 weekly quizzes
with average score of 65.9% overall as a group (range 58.9-71.3%). There were
86 responses posted within 12 discussion topics.
Eleven residents completed post-test with 100%
showing an improvement on the score (average 23.8% CI 20.4-27.2, range 10-46%).
Pre-test score average was 41% (n=15, range 2-72%) and post-test score average
was 72.7% (n=11, range 48-86%). Combined Score for all assessments (total 410)
for all 15 residents was 35.8% on average (mean 147, CI 113-180, range
1.2-80.8%) showing large spread of results due to variable participation.
Improvement on post-test scores (n=11) show a correlation with timely
assignment submission (coefficient 0.52, CI 0.6 to -0.11), weekly quiz scores
(coefficient 0.5, CI 0.6 to -0.14) and number of page views (coefficient 0.48,
CI 0.6 to -0.16).
Blended learning is a feasible and effective
for training neurology residents. Online tracking allows formative assessment
and detailed performance analysis. Factors influencing resident participation
and adoption require further study.
ONLINE
EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN
To explore the feasibility of online teaching
tool especially for distance learning we designed and completed 6 months online
course on movement disorders for neurologist.
There are no Fellowship trained movement
disorders neurologist in Pakistan and a gap exist for better trained General
neurologist in movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, tremor and
dystonia etc. The course was conducted in partnership with Pakistan Society of
Neurology and movement disorders Society of Pakistan. We selected 20
participants out of 39 applicants for this pilot project. 7/20 participants
were in their residency training while 13 were practicing neurologists with
average duration since graduation of 1.35 years. The participants were selected
from 8 cities end 14 institutions.
The online course was built in a learning
management system namely Moodle and
hosted on a free Cloud Server. The
six-month course was divided into 12 modules with each module lasting for 2
weeks and each model discussing specific topic. Each module with a specific
structure that included an introduction, recorded video lectures with
PowerPoint slides, required reading materials and optional reading materials,
quiz and task assignment. we also included a podcast in each module.
Patient cases were discussed routinely and
every module participants submitted assessments and plan for a real case for
grading. Whatsapp was used as the primary platform for discussion. Participants
also submitted summary of the reading material for grading. Each module they
were given an assignment to complete that varied in each module such as Concept
map, memory matrix etc.
18/20 participants completed the online course
(90% retention rate). A total of 9098 page views were recorded online excluding
quizzes (each question requiring a page view by each participant) and 5714 page
views were required for all the quizzes (including pre and post test) or an
average of 285 questions for each participant throughout the course. And
average page view of 455 per participant over 24 weeks.
WhatsApp remained the dominant medium of
discussion and communication in the group. Total number of messages sent are
text 1186, photos 23, Videos 64, voice messages 28 and 31 documents. A total of
41 assignments and quizzes were conducted throughout the course including both
required and optional assignment (excluding pre and post test). Participants completed
on average 32/33 required assignments (97%, range 29-33) and 4.6/9 optional
assignments (51%, range 1-9).
Overall average improvement of 31% total
(range 2%-54%) is noted for the group or 162% over original score on average
(range 8%-360%). Pre-test score average is 43% (range 26%-58%) and post test
score is74% (range 50%-88%). 14/18 people have more than 25% total improvement.
A strong 71% correlation was found in the
total score in the course and the number of optional assignments completed.
Similarly, a significant positive correlation was found (30%) between number of
optional assignments completed and improvement in the post-test score which is
even more significant as there was no correlation between the actual post test
score and optional assignments. A negative correlation was found between
pre-test score and the optional assignments completed of -31%. A weaker but
positive correlation of 14% was also found between total course score and the
post test improvement.
“If you do not change directions, you may end
up where you are heading”. _Lao Tzu
Note:
Some more discussion on the education and
teaching transformation can be seen here.
About
the author: dbhatti@unmc.edu
I am a Movement
Disorder neurologist interested in innovative medical education and use of
technology in education and clinical care of my patients. My primary interest
is in Parkinson Disease and am currently involved in online courses in Movement
Disorders and Research with Parkinson Study Group in Neuro-protection. My hobby
is biosensors and smartphone applications for diagnosis.