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Effects of online palliative care training on knowledge, attitude and satisfaction of primary care physicians

BackgroundThe Spanish Palliative Care Strategy recommends an intermediate level of training for primary care physicians in order to provide them with knowledge and skills. Most of the training involves face-to-face courses but increasing pressures on physicians have resulted in fewer opportunities for provision of and attendance to this type of training. The effectiveness of on-line continuing medical education in terms of its impact on clinical practice has been scarcely studied. Its effect in relation to palliative care for primary care physicians is currently unknown, in terms of improvement in patients quality of life and main caregivers satisfaction. There is uncertainty too in terms of any potential benefits of asynchronous communication and interaction among on-line education participants, as well as of the effect of the learning process.The authors have developed an on-line educational model for palliative care which has been applied to primary care physicians in order to measure its effectiveness regarding knowledge, attitude towards palliative care, and physicians satisfaction in comparison with a control group.The effectiveness evaluation at 18 months and the impact on the quality of life of patients managed by the physicians, and the main caregivers satisfaction will be addressed in a different paper.MethodsRandomized controlled educational trial to compared, on a first stage, the knowledge and attitude of primary care physicians regarding palliative care for advanced cancer patients, as well as satisfaction in those who followed an on-line palliative care training program with tutorship, using a Moodle Platform vs. traditional education.Results169 physicians were included, 85 in the intervention group and 84 in the control group, of which five were excluded. Finally 82 participants per group were analyzed. There were significant differences in favor of the intervention group, in terms of knowledge (mean 4.6; CI 95%: 2.8 to 6.5 (p = 0.0001), scale range 0-33), confidence in symptom management (p = 0.02) and confidence in terms of communication (p = 0.038). Useful aspects were pointed out, as well as others to be improved in future applications. The satisfaction of the intervention group was high.ConclusionsThe results of this study show that there was a significant increase of knowledge of 14%-20% and a significant increase in the perception of confidence in symptom management and communication in the intervention group in comparison with the control group that received traditional methods of education in palliative care or no educational activity at all. The overall satisfaction with the intervention was good-very good for most participants.This on-line educational model seems a useful tool for palliative care training in primary care physicians who have a high opinion about the integration of palliative care within primary care. The results of this study support the suggestion that learning effectiveness should be currently investigated comparing different Internet interventions, instead of Internet vs. no intervention.Trial RegistrationGerman Clinical Trials Register DRKS00000694

An Evaluation Framework for e-Learning Platforms Based on Educational Standard Specifications

This paper describes a framework which is based on the use of standard specifications that allow instructors the elaboration of benchmarks to evaluate e-learning platforms. The proposed framework is also based on a Learning Platform Evaluation Model that assumes three main areas of functionality of any learning platform: Content, Interaction, and Management. It has been applied to compare the functionalities of two widespread LMS platforms that support SCORM specifications. The paper includes some evaluation experiences using a benchmark prototype which is implemented by means of a SCORM 1.2 package. These experiences reveal the lack of integration of educational standard specifications into current e-learning platforms, mainly in the Interaction and Management functionality areas.

A Tablet PC-based teaching approach using conceptual maps

There are clear evidences that technology can drive major positive changes in the classroom addressing problems associated with traditional lecture-based pedagogy. In particular, the flexibility of Tablet PCs and digital ink has the potential to achieve a wide range of educational goals and promote a more dynamic classroom environment. However, as the possibilities of these educational technologies grow, it seems necessary to consider their role by conceptualizing the knowledge they provide. In this work we propose a teaching approach based on the use of conceptual maps to generate instructor guidelines for Tablet PC-based courses. Our approach combines the instructional domain with the technological one in order to offer practical guidelines to design and develop both lecture materials and active learning experiences, providing a systematic and flexible way to guide the teaching process in a Tablet PC-based learning scenarios. We present a case study on how to implement the approach in a first-year Computer Engineering course reporting the introduction of the Tablet PC in this educational setting.

An instructional approach to drive computer science courses through virtual learning environments

Nowadays, many universities have adopted Virtual Learning Environments for delivering and distributing educational resources. In the context of Computer Science (CS) courses, the use of these environments addresses several issues ranging from the application of instructional strategies to the selection of the most adequate learning platform. In this work, we propose an instructional approach to drive CS courses through virtual learning environments. The concept of driving a CS course adds a pedagogical value to the classical approach delivering educational resources. This pedagogical value is supported by applying instructional methods based on pedagogical patterns to design specific components of CS courses. The use of these pedagogical patterns helps to guide the deployment of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) in CS courses enabling a connection between the course requirements and the VLE features. We have evaluated the proposed approach using an example of VLE called Poliformat. The evaluation focuses on the platform role as the road to drive Operating System courses during the 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years. The evaluation results have contributed to a better understanding of how virtual learning environments can be used in CS courses and they confirm the benefits of applying instructional based approaches.

A Tablet PC-Based Learning Approach on a First-Year Computer Engineering Course

The era of communication technology has now a great impact in our daily lives. Learning approaches are now evolving from traditional slide-based lectures into much more dynamic ones, where technology plays a key role in order to improve the students’ academic performance and engagement. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to develop interactive classroom environments supported by mobile Tablet PC technology, which integrates formative assessment into classroom practices and provides immediate feedback to students. We describe practical guidelines to design and develop both lecture materials and active learning exercises in the context of this next-generation technology.

Tools for Creation and Management of Didactic Resources in EIE

Nowadays, the creation and design of didactic resources and tools in the technological context is becoming a challenging task, because of the diversity and complexity of new standards, services and applications. Therefore, collaboration among different working groups from different institutions is needed. This collaboration requires to create conventions and to use standardised formats to allow interoperability and to simplify the tasks to be performed by such groups. In this paper we describe several tools oriented to the management of didactic resources, which have been obtained as a result of the cooperation between two groups, one from the University of Vigo, and another one from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. The first contribution of the paper describes the use of structures, denoted as “Packages” following IMS specifications. These packages are combined with metadata to characterise those resources using a standard format denoted by LOM and proposed by IEEE LSTC. As a complement to those packages, we use LMML (Learning Material Mark-up Language) documents and X-Quest questionnaires to define the contents linked to our courses. The second contribution describes the architecture and features of new tools (Xedu and X-Learn) designed for the creation, edition, management and visualisation of didactic resources. Our final aim is to use both contributions in the European Network THEIERE (Thematic Harmonisation in Electrical and Information Engineering in Europe) oriented to the harmonisation of resources and curricula in the EIE (Electronic and Information Engineering) field.

Using Digital Medical Collections to Support Radiology Training in E-learning Platforms

This work is focused on using the huge amount of medical cases available in medical digital collections to support specific radiology training courses, particularly addressed to medical residents. Such support is based on retrieving information items from these extant digital collections and generating instructional resources that can be deployed in the resident training context. The key element for this information management is a tool called Clavy, which retrieves pieces of content in medical collections and allows hospital tutors to generate educational resources easily under standard specifications and work with them in the most popular e-learning platforms. An example of a radiology course was implemented in Moodle to demonstrate the Clavy approach to the generation of training resources and their use in e-Learning platforms.

La anotación como estrategia para mejorar la expresión escrita en inglés

La introduccion de las nuevas tecnologias ha cambiado de forma radical el paradigma de la comunicacion, particularmente entre los jovenes que son actualmente nuestros alumnos universitarios. Esta nueva forma de comunicacion, como SMS, WHATSAPP, TWITTER, e-mail, etc, se caracteriza por la brevedad del mensaje y carencia de una estructura organizativa definida. Como consecuencia, cada vez hay mas candidatos que no superan la prueba de expresion escrita en examenes de competencia linguistica de ingles. Queda asi patente que es necesario explorar nuevos enfoques educativos que favorezcan el desarrollo de estrategias de escritura en ingles mas eficientes que los metodos tradicionales. La anotacion es una tecnica que consiste en ir anadiendo notas a un texto, tales como comentarios, sugerencias, observaciones, etc. Entre las ventajas de esta tecnica podemos destacar la de favorecer el aprendizaje colaborativo, incrementado la motivacion de los estudiantes al trabajar en equipo, lo que permite desarrollar una vision mas completa de la estructura textual y profundizar en sus componentes linguisticos. ´En este trabajo presentamos una aplicacion practica de la tecnica de anotacion mediante la aplicacion Hypothes.is que se ha llevado a cabo en la Facultad de ADE con alumnos de 4o de grado que cursan la asignatura Ingles para la Comunicacion Empresarial.

Supporting Instructors in Designing Tablet PC-Based Courses

Nowadays, there are multiple examples of technologies which can drive major positive changes in classroom settings. In particular, the flexibility of Tablet PCs and digital ink has the potential to achieve a wide range of educational goals and promote a more dynamic classroom environment. However, as the possibilities of these educational technologies grow, it seems necessary to consider their role by conceptualizing the knowledge they provide. In this work we propose an approach based on the use of conceptual maps to generate instructor guidelines for designing Tablet PC-based courses. Our approach combines the instructional domain with the technological one in order to offer practical guidelines to design and develop both lecture materials and active learning tasks, providing a systematic and flexible way to organize the teaching process in Tablet PC-based courses. The approach has been implemented in a pilot section during a first year Computer Engineering course with successful results.

A Framework for Educational Adaptive Hypermedia Applications

Hypermedia technology has a large spread in the instructional field, specially in Web-based educational environments. Adaptive hypermedia systems have been focused on such aspects as specifying user models to adapt the educational contents and the navigation structure providing learning paths. The work presented in this paper addresses a new aspect based on adapting the access to the didactic structures, that encapsulate educational contents and learning paths, to support useful educational adaptive applications. It is presented a framework to support the design process which is divided in two main parts: the first one is focused on instructional issues such as the organization of educational contents and the learning tasks to access them; and the second one is based on the translation of these instructional entities into hypermedia components, for which the Labyrinth hypermedia model is used.