The use of Web 2.0 in teaching Medical Informatics to postgraduate medical students: first experiences

Medicine 2.0

Introduction Recent technological advances have shifted the core focus of medical education towards more active learning approaches. This shift is certainly related with evolutions on the Internet and the Web, and certainly the emergence of Web 2.0. The latter is being stressed as a promising tool for advanced support of medicine and medical education. Although Web 2.0 emphasizes on participation, in its early days is still used in the majority of cases to hold and provide content. In this paper, we demonstrate how we used Web 2.0 tools like wikis, blogs and discussion forums in delivering specific topics of Medical Informatics to postgraduate medical students. Methodology The approach is based on a blended learning scheme, where e-learning is actually complimentary to traditional classes (lectures, demos and labs). The approach utilises the SCORM standard within an open source learning environment (Moodle). Emphasis is placed not only in creating and promoting information, but also how to best utilise Web 2.0 as an active support mechanism towards a problem (or case) based learning. In our approach, students and instructors use the web as a virtual place to collaborate and create new knowledge and new educational experiences. Evaluation Students' evaluation was asked in two stages. In the first stage, students were asked to complete an anonymous questionnaire emphasising merely on the use of Web 2.0 tools. The Moodle system lead the logged-in students to an external web site powered by another open source source survey tool, namely, "PhP Surveyor", so as to maintain anonymity. Evaluation of the results indicates that students were quite satisfied by this approach, and were happy with the collaboration opportunities offered to them. Most of them admitted that they were tempted to "read what others have contributed in their own personal blogs" (which by the way were given public access to the enrolled students). In addition, they believed that they found the student collaboration opportunities offered by the system tools quite useful and enhancing the overall learning process. In the second stage students were asked to evaluate the whole course using a dedicated, home made, evaluation software, specifically developed for course evaluation purposes within the postgraduate program of the Medical School at AUTH. These evaluation results demonstrate a significant course improvement of the last year quality when compared with those obtained in the past 5 years. Discussion Evaluation of results indicates that Web 2.0 technologies have a major role to play within the educational arena. Although we have applied them to a physically akin to them course, i.e. the medical informatics course, the methodology we have utilised is by no means exclusive to other courses. In the contrary, we believe the approach is directly applicable, and we intend to expand this effort to a number of medical curriculum courses over the next few years.

The use of Web 2.0 in teaching Medical Informatics to postgraduate medical students: first experiences [4 Cr3 1530 Bamidis]