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Author: Brian S McGowan, PhD

ABSTRACT: Social Media and Organ Donor Registration

Despite countless media campaigns, organ donation rates in the United States have remained static while need has risen dramatically. New efforts to increase organ donation through public education are necessary to address the waiting list of over 100,000 patients. On May 1, 2012, the online social network, Facebook, altered its platform to allow members to specify “Organ Donor” as part of their profile. Upon such choice, members were offered a link to their state registry to complete an official designation, and their “friends” in the network were made aware of the new status as a donor. Educational links regarding donation were offered to those considering the new organ donor status. On the first day of the Facebook organ donor initiative, there were 13,054 new online registrations, representing a 21.1-fold increase over the baseline average of 616 registrations. This first-day effect ranged from 6.9× (Michigan) to 108.9× (Georgia). Registration rates remained elevated in the following 12 days. During the same time period, no increase was seen in registrations from the DMV. Novel applications of social media may prove effective in increasing organ donation rates and likewise might be utilized in other refractory public health problems in which communication and education are essential.

via Social Media and Organ Donor Registration: T… [Am J Transplant. 2013] – PubMed – NCBI.

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MANUSCRIPT: Motivational profiles of medical students: Association with study effort, academic performance and exhaustion

Background

Students enter the medical study with internally generated motives like genuine interest (intrinsic motivation) and/or externally generated motives like parental pressure or desire for status or prestige (controlled motivation). According to Self-determination theory (SDT), students could differ in their study effort, academic performance and adjustment to the study depending on the endorsement of intrinsic motivation versus controlled motivation. The objectives of this study were to generate motivational profiles of medical students using combinations of high or low intrinsic and controlled motivation and test whether different motivational profiles are associated with different study outcomes.

Methods

Participating students (N = 844) from University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, were classified to different subgroups through K-means cluster analysis using intrinsic and controlled motivation scores. Cluster membership was used as an independent variable to assess differences in study strategies, self-study hours, academic performance and exhaustion from study.

Results

Four clusters were obtained: High Intrinsic High Controlled (HIHC), Low Intrinsic High Controlled (LIHC), High Intrinsic Low Controlled (HILC), and Low Intrinsic Low Controlled (LILC). HIHC profile, including the students who are interest + status motivated, constituted 25.2% of the population (N = 213). HILC profile, including interest-motivated students, constituted 26.1% of the population (N = 220). LIHC profile, including status-motivated students, constituted 31.8% of the population (N = 268). LILC profile, including students who have a low-motivation and are neither interest nor status motivated, constituted 16.9% of the population (N = 143). Interest-motivated students (HILC) had significantly more deep study strategy (p < 0.001) and self-study hours (p < 0.05), higher GPAs (p < 0.001) and lower exhaustion (p < 0.001) than status-motivated (LIHC) and low-motivation (LILC) students.

Conclusions

The interest-motivated profile of medical students (HILC) is associated with good study hours, deep study strategy, good academic performance and low exhaustion from study. The interest + status motivated profile (HIHC) was also found to be associated with a good learning profile, except that students with this profile showed higher surface strategy. Low-motivation (LILC) and status-motivated profiles (LIHC) were associated with the least desirable learning behaviours.

via BMC Medical Education | Abstract | Motivational profiles of medical students: Association with study effort, academic performance and exhaustion.

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What is the future of technology in education?

A couple of weeks ago I was asked what I thought the future of technology in education was. It is a really interesting question and one that I am required to think about all the time. By its very nature, technology changes at a fast pace and making it accessible to pupils, teachers and other stakeholders is an ongoing challenge.

So what is the future? Is it the iPad?

No, I don’t think it is. For me, the future is not about one specific device. Don’t get me wrong, I love the iPad. In fact, I have just finished a trial to see if using them really does support teaching and learning – and they have proved effective. I’ve written about the trial in more detail on my blog.

via What is the future of technology in education? | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional.

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MANUSCRIPT: Nervous system examination on YouTube

BACKGROUND:

Web 2.0 sites such as YouTube have become a useful resource for knowledge and are used by medical students as a learning resource. This study aimed at assessing videos covering the nervous system examination on YouTube.

METHODS:

A research of YouTube was conducted from 2 November to 2 December 2011 using the following key words “nervous system examination”, “nervous system clinical examination”, “cranial nerves examination”, “CNS examination”, “examination of cerebellum”, “balance and coordination examination”. Only relevant videos in the English language were identified and related URL recorded. For each video, the following information was collected: title, author/s, duration, number of viewers, number of posted comments, and total number of days on YouTube. Using criteria comprising content, technical authority and pedagogy parameters, videos were rated independently by three assessors and grouped into educationally useful and non-educationally useful.

RESULTS:

A total of 2240 videos were screened; 129 were found to have relevant information to nervous system examination. Analysis revealed that 61 (47%) of the videos provided useful information on the nervous system examination. These videos scored (mean ± SD, 14.9 ± 0.2) and mainly covered examination of the whole nervous system (8 videos, 13%), cranial nerves (42 videos, 69%), upper limbs (6 videos, 10%), lower limbs (3 videos, 5%), balance and co-ordination (2 videos, 3%). The other 68 (53%) videos were not useful educationally; scoring (mean ± SD, 11.1 ± 3.0). The total viewers of all videos was 2,189,434. Useful videos were viewed by 1,050,445 viewers (48% of total viewers). The total viewership per day for useful videos was 1,794.5 and for non-useful videos 1,132.0. The differences between the three assessors were insignificant (less than 0.5 for the mean and 0.3 for the SD).

CONCLUSIONS:

Currently, YouTube provides an adequate resource for learning nervous system examination, which can be used by medical students. However, there were deficiencies in videos covering examination of the cerebellum and balance system. Useful videos can be used as learning resources to medical students.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23259768

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ABSTRACT: Imaging-based observational databases for clinical problem solving: the role of informatics

Imaging has become a prevalent tool in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, providing a unique in vivo, multi-scale view of anatomic and physiologic processes. With the increased use of imaging and its progressive technical advances, the role of imaging informatics is now evolving—from one of managing images, to one of integrating the full scope of clinical information needed to contextualize and link observations across phenotypic and genotypic scales. Several challenges exist for imaging informatics, including the need for methods to transform clinical imaging studies and associated data into structured information that can be organized and analyzed. We examine some of these challenges in establishing imaging-based observational databases that can support the creation of comprehensive disease models. The development of these databases and ensuing models can aid in medical decision making and knowledge discovery and ultimately, transform the use of imaging to support individually-tailored patient care.

via Imaging-based observational databases for clinical problem solving: the role of informatics — Bui et al. — Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

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ABSTRACT: E-learning: the essential usability perspective

BACKGROUND:
Usability is the ease with which something can be used, but this essential concept appears to be rarely considered when using technology for teaching and learning in medical education.
CONTEXT:
There is an increasing use of technology in an attempt to enhance teaching and learning in medical education, from the use of websites and virtual learning environments (VLEs) to interactive online tutorials to blogs and podcasts. However, research suggests that the potential use of technology to enhance teaching and learning in medical education is often not fully realised. One aspect is the perceived usefulness of the technology, but another is the usability as perceived by the learner.
INNOVATION:
The purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of usability in relation to the use of technology to enhance teaching and learning in medical education, the essential factors that should be considered in the design and implementation of using technology, and to describe how the usability can be tested.
IMPLICATIONS:
Careful attention needs to be made to the main factors that determine usability: the learner and context; the technology being used; and the content.

via E-learning: the essential usability perspective. [Clin Teach. 2013] – PubMed – NCBI.

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RESOURCE: Five medical apps that keep your medical knowledge current

Traditional methods of staying up to date with medical knowledge include structured activities like attending conferences and unstructured activities like reading journals–both of which involve the unidirectional transfer of knowledge.As medical schools shift to more collaborative models of training where students are encouraged to discuss and challenge what they are taught, one would expect that this type of learning may not be ideal for future generations of clinicians.Fortunately, we are now seeing the emergence of tools that will help add a new dimension to continuing education; one where even a rural primary care physician can participate in thoughtful debate about the latest hypertension guidelines with far flung peers.

via Five medical apps that keep your medical knowledge current.

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ABSTRACT: Too Close or Too Far Hurts: Cognitive Distance and Group Cognitive Synergy

Groups encounter difficulties in becoming better than their individual members. This study assesses the nature of the relationship between cognitive distance (operationalized as the extent to which the best performing individual is detached from the rest of the group) and two types of group synergy: weak cognitive synergy (collective performance is better than average individual performance) and strong cognitive synergy (collective performance exceeds the performance of the best individual in the group). We hypothesized that the relationship between cognitive distance and group cognitive synergy has an inverted U shape and we test this curvilinear relationship in two studies using judgmental and decision-making tasks. The first study shows that cognitive distance is beneficial for both weak and strong group cognitive synergy up to a point and then it becomes detrimental. A second study replicates the findings only for weak and not for strong synergy in a task that evaluates individual and collective rationality in decision making.

via Too Close or Too Far Hurts: Cognitive Distance and Group Cognitive Synergy.

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ABSTRACT: Social Constructivist Teaching Strategies in the Small Group Classroom

The purpose of this article is to describe a series of techniques for teaching students about groups. Vygotsky’s social constructivism is used as a theoretical framework to understand the ways that students acquire knowledge about groups. After a brief discussion of this framework, we turn to a discussion of five specific pedagogical techniques for teaching small group and teamwork principles. These techniques include (a) carefully assigning group membership, (b) using a grading structure that incorporates individual, group, and peer evaluation assessment, (c) testing students individually and in groups, (d) asking students to write two papers that require an analysis and synthesis of both readings and observations, and (e) requiring a comprehensive service learning project from students that requires their collaboration for successful completion. The last portion of the article describes the challenges of using each of these techniques and the typical results of their application

via Social Constructivist Teaching Strategies in the Small Group Classroom.

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ABSTRACT: Reducing Faultlines in Geographically Dispersed Teams: Self-Disclosure and Task Elaboration

Faultlines have the potential to significantly disrupt team performance due to the creation of intergroup bias. In geographically dispersed teams, given the combination of dispersed locations and other diversity characteristics, faultlines are potentially a major issue that needs to be more fully understood. This study examines the impact of faultlines on geographically dispersed teams and how problems caused by faultlines can be resolved. An experimental study of 40, four-person student teams finds that perceived faultlines heighten conflict and impair decision process quality. The findings also suggest that self-disclosure via weblogs and task elaboration can repair damage caused by faultlines. However, self-disclosure does not have a direct effect on reducing faultlines; the relationship is moderated by social attraction. That is, as team members disclose personal information to out-group members and out-group members are attracted to such disclosure, perceived faultlines are diminished. This study also finds that even in teams with strong perceived faultlines, team members are still able to exchange and integrate perspectives if they have a better understanding of their out-group members via self-disclosure. The negative consequence of faultlines therefore is eased when task elaboration occurs during task execution. Implications of these coping mechanisms for teams with faultlines in organizations are discussed.

via Reducing Faultlines in Geographically Dispersed Teams: Self-Disclosure and Task Elaboration.

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