Experiments with Weblearn Tools in Medical Sciences

Helen Christian

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics

The first year medical students sit their first professional qualifying exams in week 9 of Trinity Term yet they are taught a large number of new topics, including ‘Reproduction’, up to the end of week 6. The time pressure and volume of material promotes surface and passive learning.

65 lectures in Trinity term

CAL sessions alongside histology practicals have flexible format

Year 1 Medicine at Oxford

Interactive teaching with large groups

Are lectures effective?

Eric Mazur (2009) Large scale tutorial idea

Evidence for benefits of audience response systems in medical sciences

Use of the Weblearn polls tool in an interactive revision session

Aims

1. empower the students to actively learn from and explore their understanding of reproduction through the questions in an interactive quiz in a revision session

2. successfully use the weblearn poll feature to display the quiz

3. to introduce the students to Mobile Oxford and to use their mobiles to vote for answers.

• Brief explanation of the aim of the session and where to find the quiz, projected the weblearn poll page

• Distributed Mobile Oxford handout, staff on hand Worked in groups or singly to complete the quiz

• Display of poll results and discussion

The day before: set up a quiz of 27 ‘extended match’ questions in weblearn poll

Use of the Weblearn polls tool in an interactive revision session

On the day:

Results

those students with internet enabled mobiles were very enthusiastic about the Mobile Oxford interface

Indicate the overall value of the session on a scale 0-10.

Score 7 8 9 10

Number 5 22 14 14

59/60 would like to use Weblearn polls interactive format in future teaching.

‘the session reassured me that I have good knowledge of reproduction and highlighted areas I need to work on’‘good to learn how to use m.ox.ac.uk’ ‘working in a group more thought went into answers’‘it was useful to identify common misconceptions, why options were wrong (via different votes) not just which ones were right’ ‘the mobile worked well, good clear interface’

What has been valuable for you in this session?

‘the cross used to mark the voting on my mobile was confusing as I thought the answer was wrong’

What could be improved?

‘mobile connection was very slow’

‘if the correct answer was shown on poll that would be helpful’

‘I want to do the quiz again as revision’

‘to have a personal score show at the end’

What could be improved?

to include images

‘survey’ tool has the advantage that can save multiple ‘tests’ and re-use – mobile enabled in the future

I like the ‘real-time’ nature – that discussion is led by the direction of the answers.

Used a similar format in ‘mock’ teaching sessions inSet advance reading, short lecture, then discussion around questions in poll‘Public poll’ as students did not have SSO

UNIQ Summer School

Next…

To use weblearn polls within a lecture. Use the Edu-roam system for web access, introduce to new intakeStudy of the learning outcome?

Thanks to:Jill Fresen, Fawei GengDamion Young, John Mason, Pauline Woolley