POSTER
Student Teachers: Medical Students Developing Content for
their own Website Supported, Self Assessment, Question Database
Gaurav Gupta, JuHo Park, Joyce Nyhof-Young, Stuart
Hutchison, Stephen Keleher, Ferdinand Kraus, Stephen Matthews, and Lawrence
Spero
ABSTRACT:
Background: Our education team at the Faculty of Medicine, University
of Toronto was comprised of medical educators, medical students and technology
experts who collectively contributed to the development of Student Teacher
Program (STP). In this program, each Student Teacher (medical student) created
several complete question and answer sets based on their current
curriculum/lectures, met with faculty to correct these sets, and submitted
these questions to the course’s specific Student Teacher website for the rest
of the class to view. Purpose: We developed the Student Teacher Program (STP)
to combine aspects of peer teaching, student/faculty collaboration and
self-directed learning into one educational, technology based resource. The
study was conducted to measure the perceived usefulness of the site and the
willingness of students to contribute to similar resources if incorporated as a
standard part of the medical curriculum.
Methods: Website programming occurred from May to August 2002. To
measure the value of the STP, a pilot project was introduced to the first year
medical class at the University of Toronto during their Metabolism &
Nutrition course block in February 2003. Shortly thereafter, the subjective
experiences of students were assessed through a survey detailing usage,
educational value and barriers to use. Results: The survey showed half the
class used the website resource, and found the question/answer website most
useful because it allowed them to self assess conceptual understanding. Any
barriers to website use appeared to be a concern for users, rather than
predictive of reasons that kept students away (i.e., non-users).
Conclusion: The Student Teacher Program can be an important
complimentary resource for preclinical lecture based medical curriculum.
BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:
Objectives:
1.To understand how the Student Teacher Program uses an
information technology framework to incorporate aspects of peer teaching,
student/faculty collaboration and self-directed learning into one on-line
educational resource.
2.To understand how computer- and internet-based technology
is being utilized at the University of Toronto as adjuncts to the traditional
lecture based, preclinical medical curriculum.
3. To understand how
formative evaluation has indicated that the Student Teacher Program is
perceived by users to be a valuable educational adjunct to a lecture-based
curriculum.
Joyce Nyhof-Young,
PhD
Princess Margaret
Hospital
610 University Avenue
5-312
Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M5G 2M9
Phone: 416-946-4501 X
5838
Fax: 416-946-4442
mailto:joyce.nyhof-young@uhn.on.ca
CO-AUTHORS:
Gaurav Gupta
mailto:Gaurav.gupta@utoronto.ca
JuHo Park, Stuart
Hutchison, Stephen Keleher, Ferdinand Kraus, Stephen Matthews
All C/o Dr. Lawrence
Spero,
Division of
Educational Computing
Medical Sciences
Building, 3388A
University of
Toronto,
Toronto, ON, Canada
M5S 1A8
Phone: 416-978-6014
Fax: 416-978-6168