Fwd: Med-Ed: Medical Schools making substantial use of technology?

[Guest guest]

>

>

> Carol Kamin, Diane Heestand, Anna Moses and I have been working on a

> project for the past two years to review both the educational

> technology services and organizational structure of educational

> technology in US and Canadian medical schools. We have gathered data

> from focus groups, surveys and soon a series of structure interviews.

>

> Our data will reveal trends in specific services and initiatives that

> medical schools are offering, whether they have built or bought, and

> what they require of their medical students in regards to hardware and

> software. We also plan to write up specific cases that represent

> different organizational models for supporting educational technology

> in medical schools.

>

> The use of technology in medical education is no longer a novelty, but

> swiftly becoming an integrated and necessary part of our culture.

> Early adopters of technology in teaching found little support from

> their departments or schools. Learning materials were developed with

> little support from curriculum leaders and often times, excellent

> modules that were labor intensive and expensive to produce enjoyed

> short lives, because they had limited audiences, narrow focus, were

> not in line with curricular priorities and few champions beyond their

> creators. Recent (since 1985) pioneers in the use of educational

> technology turned to resources such as Slice of Life and CRIME

> (Computer Resources in Medical Education) for support.

>

> In the mid-90's we began to see more centralized support for ET.

> During this period, medical schools and health science libraries began

> to support the individuals who used and developed technology in their

> teaching, but there was still little centralized effort for

> integrating technology into the curriculum. During this time we saw a

> wealth of new materials, but still the majority of these materials

> were used in isolated settings, were narrowly focused in their

> objectives and target audience and not widely recognized by

> educational leaders at our institutions.

>

> As the tumblers of time rotated around to the year 2000 we began to

> see an awakening by medical school leadership and the LCME to the

> value of technology in teaching health professionals. The Web had

> begun to mature, students could afford computers, and increasingly

> students were entering medical schools who had become accustomed to

> online learning and the integration of technology into their

> undergraduate experiences. Not only was the effective and appropriate

> use of technology beneficial to medical education, but it was also

> becoming necessary to remain competitive in the pursuit of the best

> and brightest medical students. In addition, a tightening of operating

> budgets led to improved efficiency in supporting and integrating

> technology into teaching.

>

> The University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine used

> very little technology to support teaching prior to 2000. We faced the

> launch of a new curriculum in September 2001 and a decision was made

> by the educational leadership to infuse the curriculum with

> technology. Specifically, every required course in the curriculum

> would have online materials that supplemented face-to-face learning.

> UCSF put its resources into a few key individuals who led the

> development of an infrastructure to support technology in teaching and

> once in place, a faculty who had been rather passive in the

> development of this infrastructure became engaged in the possibilities

> of using technology in a highly integrated, well supported

> environment. The use of technology by our faculty increased

> exponentially and by June 2003 all of our required courses of years

> 1-3 had online course materials. Medical students and faculty utilize

> the online learning environment daily as a place where " the curriculum

> comes together... " .It has formed the community of our medical

> education experience at UCSF.

>

> In addition to UCSF, UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, Wake Forest and Virginia

> Commonwealth University are just a few of the schools that I am

> personally aware of that have developed centralized support of

> educational technology. Our study will certainly reveal more schools.

> I would be happy to speak with you further and we hope to have

> information regarding our study available soon.

>

> See <http://missinglink.ucsf.edu/crime/projects/default.htm>

>

> Sincerely

> Kevin H. Souza

> Director, Office of Educational Technology

> UCSF School of Medicine

> http://medschool.ucsf.edu/oet

> (415) 476-8086 Voice

> (415) 514-0468 Fax

>

>

>

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