Designing LAMS templates for medical education

Bronwen DalzielSchool 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

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 2007

• 5 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