Thursday, February 2, 2012

E learning for medical colleges

E learning for medical colleges

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Exploring Virtual Worlds for Scenario-Based Repeated Team Training of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Medical Students

Exploring Virtual Worlds for Scenario-Based Repeated Team Training of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Medical Students: "Background: Contemporary learning technologies, such as massively multiplayer virtual worlds (MMVW), create new means for teaching and training. However, knowledge about the effectiveness of such training is incomplete, and there are no data regarding how students experience it. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a field within medicine in high demand for new and effective training modalities. Objective: In addition to finding a feasible way to implement CPR training, our aim was to investigate how a serious game setting in a virtual world using avatars would influence medical students’ subjective experiences as well as their retention of knowledge. Methods: An MMVW was refined and used in a study to train 12 medical students in CPR in 3-person teams in a repeated fashion 6 months apart. An exit questionnaire solicited reflections over their experiences. As the subjects trained in 4 CPR scenarios, measurements of self-efficacy, concentration, and mental strain were made in addition to measuring knowledge. Engagement modes and coping strategies were also studied. Parametric and nonparametric statistical analyses were carried out according to distribution of the data. Results: The majority of the subjects reported that they had enjoyed the training, had found it to be suitable, and had learned something new, although several asked for more difficult and complex scenarios as well as a richer virtual environment. The mean values for knowledge dropped during the 6 months from 8.0/10 to 6.25/10 (P = .002). Self-efficacy increased from before to after each of the two training sessions, from 5.9/7 to 6.5/7 (P = .01) after the first and from 6.0/7 to 6.7/7 (P = .03) after the second. The mean perceived concentration value increased from 54.2/100 to 66.6/100 (P = .006), and in general the mental strain was found to be low to moderate (mean = 2.6/10). Conclusions: Using scenario-based virtual world team training with avatars to train medical students in multi-person CPR was feasible and showed promising results. Although we found no evidence of stimulated recall of CPR procedures in our test-retest study, the subjects were enthusiastic and reported increased concentration during the training. We also found that subjects’ self-efficacy had increased after the training. Despite the need for further studies, these findings imply several possible uses of MMVW technology for future emergency medical training.



This is the abstract only. Read the full article on the JMIR site. JMIR is the leading open access journal for eHealth and healthcare in the Internet age.


Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Access Dermatology - free multimedia educational site by Reuters

According to the website, Access Dermatology is a multimedia educational platform aimed at delivering continuing education to dermatology professionals that follows a yearly academic syllabus.





The Scientific Skills section includes:


- Webcasts of congress and other scientific meetings sessions

- Image Bank - a library of images on several disease areas with an alphabetical search engine


- Breaking News - drug development, diagnosis and treatment, congress highlights, symposia webcasts, keynote speaker interviews


- Core Papers - series of articles on disease, treatment and novel therapeutic approaches


- Clinical Trials - a guide to key clinical trials in dermatology


This is the link to the Advisory Board of the website. The project is sponsored by Prous Science S.A.U., a part of Thomson Reuters.


The access to most of the resources requires free registration.


References:
Breaking news
Clinical Trials
Congress Reports

Friday, July 2, 2010

New Tools for Educators in Second Life

Over 5000 educators use Second Life to teach including Harvard Law professors Charlie and Becca Nesson.  The new viewer promises to draw more teachers to the fold as virtual life is a lot easier for newbies and inworld tools are a whole lot more collaborative.

What new tools for educators are breathing life into Second Life?

HTML on a Prim

In Second Life, sharing websites has been slightly cumbersome.  In the old-old days, the only way to do it was to open a browser outside the SL platform.  While not terribly taxing, it was a pain for students to toggle back and forth.

Those days are long gone, and improvements and upgrades allowed you to set a parcel to a specific web page for viewing, but NOW you can actually WRITE ON the prim, click it, use YouTube, search for images, Google, check email, or even edit a collaborative wiki.

second life educators

This is an uber cool feature for teachers because it allows them to use a wiki as a live chalkboard.  While students will have to refresh their views to see updates, they won’t have to leave Second Life to do it.  Sweeeet.

Easy Peasy Menu

In the old viewer, the infamous pie wheel appeared when you right-clicked on yourself.  Now, life is not so complicated.  There is a menu bar on the right side that hosts all of the options you will need as a new or advanced user.

second life educators

This is truly helpful to teachers because most of the initial class time spent in world was devoted to trying to show students how to find things like their inventory (hair is really important in creating your second self!).  Everything a new resident needs is on this new side menu.

People Locator

One of the fair criticisms of Second Life is that there is never anybody in it.  That isn’t actually true, since 65,000 users are always logged in and millions of people have accounts.  The problem is, like in real life, people are scattered and pockets of people are hard to find.  It isn’t any different than real life; if you were to go to a bank at 3AM, you would hope to find it empty.

second life educators

Since Second Life is a 24 hour operation with people from every corner of the earth, there is a great chance you are logged in at a time when other folks are sleeping.  The new people locator helps you find the hot spot pockets of people.  If you want to send your students to do a survey or to observe avatar behavior, they can simply click on the people finder and teleport to the nearest cluster of people.

Easy Talk

The new viewer includes a much easier way to use the voice system.  Now there is one simple button to push, and you are able to chat away with your students.  The old menu wasn’t hard, but it was a bit cumbersome and not at all intuitive.  This one-button approach will help students get connected instantly.

Educators in Second Life

Educators will love the new Second Life viewer because it is easier to use and more functional.  Less time will be spent showing students how to wear shoes, and more time can be spent working in groups on collaborative content.

Lots of seasoned SL bloggers have been discussing the new viewer, and experienced users have mixed emotions about the new look and feel of it.  How do you feel about the new viewer?  Do you think it will be easier for educators to use, or should Linden Lab tweak it a bit before it goes out of Beta?

Image credit: Daniel Voyager
From- MakeUseOf.com

Friday, May 28, 2010

Because Every Country Is The Best At Something

Because Every Country Is The Best At Something: "

International Number Ones: Because Every Country Is The Best At Something

International number ones

Data: http://bit.ly/IntNoOnes

Note: Roll over the main image to see the countries.




DESIGN: David McCandless

RESEARCH: David McCandless, Chris J Hall, Alexia Wdowski, Pearl Doughty White, Caroline Flynn, James Key (yes it was a lot of work!)

ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Matt Hancock, Joe Swainson

SOURCES: NationMaster.com, The CIA World FactBook, Wikipedia, FAO @ The UN, Press Reports

DATA: Explore in this Google doc

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Using Digital Storytelling for Creative and Innovative e-Learning



"This article discusses how creativity and innovation can be enhanced with e-learning systems based on digital storytelling. A story creation model called movement-oriented design (MOD) is introduced for systematically developing effective digital stories, in conjunction with story creation principles articulated by Robert McKee, a Hollywood guru of script writing."

Using Digital Storytelling for Creative and Innovative e-Learning:

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Facebook for Learning


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LEARNING SESSION
This week's learning session explored Facebook and how we can use it to facilitate learning. As expected, thanks to the juicy topic 'Facebook', we had a full house (e-learning lab, I mean!). Only 25 were allowed to register, but we ended up with 32 participants, which just illustrates that Facebook is an interesting topic.

LET'S DO IT!

Based on our recent poll the majority of both Academic staff (66.7) and students (67.8) that participated think that IMU should use Facebook for e-learning.


But, where to start?

To get your Facebook social learning space moving, why not for starters create a 'Facebook Group' (especially if you want to have a closed group)?


STEP-BY-STEP
Here are two screencast tutorials exploring how to create a Facebook Group and how we could use it to facilitate learning:


Part 1 - Creating a 'Facebook Group'


Part 2 - Exploring Facebook Group Features


But...



Why not combine Moodle (E-learning Portal) and Facebook to facilitate online learning environments that sizzles :)
Read more...


By- ZaidLearn