This is a research proposal design for enhancing medical learning outcomes using the engineer's scientific research worldview.

Team Member

Fahad Alam | Aaron Yin | Yudi Xiao

My Roles

Literature Review; Webinar Interface Design; Poster Design

I Learned

Experimental Design; Research Proposal Writing

Introduction

Medical trainees gain critical learning experiences through exposure to clinical environments but the hours have been reduced due to patient safety issues secondary to trainee fatigue. Thus, the ability of the medical education community to provide optimal learning opportunities for medical trainees remains a challenge.

One way to meet this challenge is to supplement reduced learning opportunities with the use of Electronic-learning, specifically webinars. However, minimal research has gone into investigation of the most effective manner to design webinars to enhance their ability to teach complex medical content. One webinar design solution might be to add the learning strategy of gamification. Gamification is thought to influence learning through increasing motivation and engagement.

Background Information

E-learning is defined "as the use of internet technologies to enhance knowledge and performance" and has been found to be at least as effective as traditional instructor-led curriculum. E-learning can incorporate many different forms of such as Internet recorded lectures, videos, or journal articles to name only a few.

A webinar is a specific form of e-learning that is currently being used within the University of Toronto medical school. Webinars are an online based education curriculum module that can be accessed on a regular computer or a portable device. They can consist of verbal narration, music or video images and is easily downloaded from the Internet. It represents a mobile, low-cost, minimally resource intensive and sustainable means to convey medical curriculum. However, in order to best utilize webinars to enhance learning, studies are needed to investigate the optimal manner to design them.

Gamification has been defined as the use of game design elements in non-game context and serves as a potential design foundation to be used in webinars. The ability to "play" is usually voluntary and can incorporate intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Intrinsic motivation implying that pleasure is acquired from play itself through challenges and excitement and not dependent on external rewards. On the contrary, external rewards can also serve as a factor to 'play' as is the case with commercial reward points programs. Within medical education, gamification is a relatively new concept but studies are starting to reveal its positive teaching impact in specialties such as pharmacology, internal medicine and surgery for trainees.

Re'earch Goal

The overall goal of this research is to assess whether webinars intelligently designed based on a gamification foundation enhance knowledge acquisition and retention of intravenous (IV) insertion as compared to traditional webinars already in place within the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto.

Research Methods

Research Phases

Webinars Design (Control Group V.S. Experimental Group)

Webinars Interfaces in Two Groups

The webinar interfaces in the experimental group keeps the webinar interfaces in the control group and adds two gamified screen separately for displaying scores and points on the usage and ranks among the medical students.

Limitations

• There is only one specific form of gamification design — use of points and the element of competition.
• Multiple choice questionnaire is only one type of assessment technique — could expand to use performance markers such as simulation.
• Knowledge retention will only be assessed 1 week afterwards — can prolong duration for future studies.

Future Recommendations

• Evaluate alternate gamification design strategies — video game, board games, achievements, badges.
• Expand study population to a more diverse group of learners — other medical specialties such as nurses and interns.
• Investigate whether learning from the webinar actually corresponds to performance in real-life clinical environments.

References

• Cook, D. A. (2009). The failure of e-learning research to inform educational practice, and what we can do about it. Medical Teacher, 31(2), 158–162. doi:10.1080/01421590802691393
• Nasca, T. J., Day, S. H., Amis, E. S., & Force, A. D. H. T. (2010). The new recommendations on duty hours from the ACGME Task Force. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(2), e3–e3. doi:10.1056/NEJMsb1005800
• Deterding S, Dixon D, Khaled R, Nacke L: From game design elements to gamefulness New York, New York, USA, ACM Press, 2011, p9. doi:10.1145/2181037.2181040

Poster Design

Knowledge Media Design Poster Session