Changing the Way Medical Students Learn: 4 Stories from Europe

(This presentation will take place in Tools of Change for Publishing 2010 conference in New York, 02/24/2010)

Healthcare change is on everyone’s agenda nowadays as the role of medicine in society changes. The focus has shifted from the occasional care of individuals in hospitals to promoting health in the community. These changes place new demands on doctors and have forced a rethink on how students are taught in medical school. Medical training is becoming more student-centered. There is an emphasis on active learning rather than on the passive absorption of knowledge. Rigid curricula are giving way to more adaptable and flexible ones.

Publishers of medical textbooks, like Elsevier, must take account of these changes. They must be equally adaptable and flexible in the way they deliver the information. They must understand how teachers teach and how students learn. We believe there is a tremendous opportunity to drive sustained innovation in medical education.
This presentation is based on our experiences in Europe. We will highlight four stories of medical students from the UK, Spain, France and Germany that illustrate how publishers are responding to the changing needs in medical education.

The stories will cover the following topics:

• How students collect information today in order to pass exams
• New exam testing tools
• Case-study exams
• Wiki-like collaborative lesson creation
• Dealing with piracy when moving from print to electronic delivery
• Sources of content: e-libraries & e-Books
• Delivering knowledge in small chunks

Products and services that will be covered:
UK: International Virtual Dental School
Spain: ArenaMIR
France: Université Médicale Virtuelle Francophone
Germany: Mediscript

This presentation is for anyone interested in how self-directed education changes the rules of the game for publishers. No medical knowledge required!

Google Wave: teaching online made easy?

I'm one of the persons who received a Google Wave account with eight invitations available in it. I was very interested -and excited- in discovering this new territory in the net. 

It was announced as a new collaborative tool, something between email, twitter and chat. But I didn't have a clear idea in my mind of what was his potential.

Now I've been playing with Google Wave, creating new waves, sharing contents, maps and files, making simple polls, chatting in real time and locating all his secrets.

While chatting with a colleague I realized the potential Google Wave has to teach. I was giving him some information in text format: a short paragraph of a new concept I am working on. He asked me some questions (more text) and then I sent them some images with comments so he could fully understand me idea. He then proposed minor changes and asked some more questions (more text). A YouTube video came to my mind, something from a parallel world that could help me to communicate better my project to him (movie). After the movie I decided to share with him a presentation I made to introduce my thoughts to other colleagues from other countries (PowerPoint). Finally I presented to him different sources (links to different sites), which inspired me to build the concept.

So that’s what we shared: text – questions – images + text – conversation – questions – video – slideshow – links

And another very key issue in that moment was my full control of the message and contents I was using to make him understand an idea. Just adding a test at the end of this path and I would have an online teaching object (and I could share it also with others).

So now, I would like Google Wave to fully deploy its potential (some areas are not ready to use yet) so I can discover more interesting usages for this new tool.

Seth Godin on FAKE networking

Collecting information and learning

I had a very nice talk with one of my colleagues from Amsterdam. We were talking about how students, and other people, collect information to learn. The issue we were discussing was how medicine students build their papers and learn.

A few years ago, when I was in the Faculty of Law, I bought 4 or 5 really heavy books to read and learn. My teachers at the University told me the information needed to pass the exam was in those books. I didn’t have the internet at that time so no chance to google nor wiki.

A few weeks ago, faculty students ended their annual course and started summer holidays, after passing the final exams. I had a good opportunity to chat with a group of medicine students. I asked them about their books, how big and heavy are they? The answer was: we don’t know, we don’t use very much books now. We use the papers writen by our professors, plus some reference materials, plus google and some internet sources, like xtorrent and rapidshare.

I, then , asked about how did they organise all these informations from the different sources. They answered they all shared a usb flash memory stick and a gMail account to organise their info. They had a group and every person was responsible for creating some lessons. All lessons were then shared via Gmail or the USB stick. But the most interesting thing is that they were collecting information from different books, selecting the small pieces that were important to pass the exams, aggregating papers from the professors and related documents downloaded from differents websites.

A specific comment attracted my attention: they were trying to reduce the lessons to small pieces of information. Each of the lessons was a constructions of small pieces of information, coming from different sources, and aggregated by one of the members. All were working in the same way. The reason for that is they could retain more easily the information if they visualized each lesson with each small guide and a few contents in it.

The system they have created to learn is so different from the one I used 20 years ago…..but, at the same time, I do use the same system when browsing the web for new insigths, new ideas, new projects and new updates on me every day work. I collect small pieces of information, organize them in different “lessons” I have to read, and share them with my network.

If it’s working for them and it’s working for me, why are we still publishing heavy text books?

Update on the Wolfram|Alpha project

There's been great anticipation around Stephen Wolfram's ambitious project to create a comprehensive "computational knowledge engine." The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University will host a sneak preview of the Wolfram|Alpha system, and a discussion of its underlying technology and implications. Participants will include Wolfram|Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram and Professor of Law Jonathan Zittrain.


Stephen Wolfram discusses Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine...here's the video:

2019

Someone imagined the next generation tools.....




Wish I was there !

The era of THE USER

I had a revealing conversation with a relative of mine who is a Doctor. We were talking about Internet, social networks and professional information. Actually, I was interested in knowing how does he use the computer every day.

The answer was very simple: I use my laptop five to ten times per day depending on the number of patients I visit. He literally said:

“In the morning, when I arrive to my office, I read two or three different online newspapers (I wish I could learn how to use RSS),. Then I open my personal and professional email (I use to receive all kinds of jokes from other doctors, lots of spam and some professional newsletters I read in less than five minutes). In this same session I see the weather forecast for the next days and that’s all.

At lunch, I revisit my email (both of them), search some medical information when I want to revise some aspects of certain pathologies, update news (don’t have time to see the news on TV) and, from time to time, visit my Linkedin account.

During the afternoon, to prepare patient’s visits, I use to access an image database created internally with the images and videos we record on every patient. That helps me to remember their clinical dossiers and to see the evolution of the treatment.

After a long day, at home, I have another laptop I use just for fun: email, search information on interesting travels I would like to do and, sometimes, search new gadgets (TV, music, cameras).”

I then asked him about his preferred search engine. And the answer was not the one I expected (Google or Yahoo). He answered he was bored of these search engines because of the big amount of unnecessary information they offer in every search.

He told me he was expecting some smart company to create a single platform where he could “place” all the services he is using: email (both), his own images and videos database, RSS, library, travel agency, newspapers and newsletters (titles would be sufficient) and other stuff that could change from time to time. He wanted this synchronized automatically in his two laptops or, also, available in some private website (so he could access it from other’s computers).

It’s not the first time I listen to this same comment, and my own experience is that I’ve also build a centralized unique website to link all my needs of information, access to networks, banks, service’s accounts, etc.

Unconsciously, what we are doing is staying away from doing more and more searches and, instead of this, building our own system of information. This personal system is generated by our previous searches of information (a lot of them), contacts with others, and of course experience.

All these outcomes drove us to be aware of the different places we need to visit in the internet (our hard drive or network) to feed our desires. So now we tend to navigate directly to these sites instead of starting googling or yahooing.

Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

The shiny new internet browser from Google is here. Google Chrome is available for download from here. What are the implications for the two other main browsers, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I've read some blogs where people are announcing the end of the story for them, and others who are just expecting the final version of this new browser to say their final word.

But, for sure, this presentation takes the Google-Microsoft rivalry to a whole new level and it will also affect the whole internet.

One of the most interesting things in Chrome is the address bar. People in Google resolved one of the most common mistakes in browsing the web: to write a search in this bar instead of the search box. Google has unified the address bar and the seach box creating a new concept now called the Omnibox.

Networking engines

One of the wonderful services/functionalities that is offered by Facebook, Linkedin or other social networks is the one that informs you with this message: John S has updated his profile. Just this simple message posted in your landing page, or in your inbox, is powerful enough to make you visit John S profile.
This occurs because we are naturally curious about many things and, specially, the ones referred to people we know. So curiosity is a human emotion driving us to explore the unknown but also a powerful engine which can be used to drive our attention to a specific site.