BackgroundThe use of simulation in medical education has been widely accepted. There are different types of medical simulators that vary in both accuracy to emulate the real world (fidelity) and cost of development or acquisition. There is significant evidence that supports the use of high-fidelity simulators (i.e. mannequins or dummies) to prepare students for clinical environments, less attention has been given to low-fidelity simulators. This article aims to present evidence regarding the effectiveness of a low-fidelity simulator: Virtual Patient (VP), which develops several interactive computer-based clinical scenarios, seeking to promote an alternative learning environment and the development of necessary medical skills such as clinical reasoning in students of medicine.MethodsA quasi-experimental study was designed to investigate the results on the development of history taking and clinical reasoning skills in a group of undergraduate medical students, in a course devised under the concepts of constructivism in education, which used the Virtual Patient as the fundamental teaching tool. Results were measured through a mixed, quantitative and qualitative study, triangulating the results of the students’ skills evaluation when facing a clinical case represented by an actor patient before and after the course. Additionally, the description of the students’ and tool’s performance was measured by way of a qualitative study.ResultsThe comparison of the students’ skills on the evaluation matrix before-and-after the course evidenced a statistically significant advance (p < 0.01) in all aspects (interview, physical exam, clinical judgment, relevance of medical exams, and presentation of case). Students described the VP as an easy-to-use and motivating tool for learning without stress, especially at the beginning of their career. VP allowed them to create logical and structured processes, to be wrong without consequences, and to review and reassess information available. From the professor perspective, it allowed a better follow-up of the students’ learning process and favored reflections on the teaching-learning process.ConclusionsVP proved to be a valuable and useful tool for the development of clinical reasoning and history taking skills in medical students, as part of a constructivist learning course.
A measurement scale is described as a contribution to the field of ICT (information and communications technology) integration in a particular set of dimensions partially explored in the scientific literature. The institutional conditions for ICT integration has been recently studied as determinant for successful educational innovation. This work describes four dimensions that are necessary to understand those institutional conditions: technology leadership, management of innovation with ICT, and the appropriation of ICT policies at institutional and individual levels. The principal contribution of this work is to provide a valid and reliable scale (α=.96) with metric properties that are useful for researchers on ICT in education. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrates the grouping of the items in the proposed subscales and their relevance to understand the institutional condition for ICT innovation. The scale allows the institutional diagnosis in relation to the conditions that are decisive for the successful integration of ICT as support for educational innovation processes.
Innovation in education enhanced by new technologies has become a central issue in the agenda of many countries around the world. This article analyses this emergence as a dispositive installed in education and points out the need to understand how it is enacted on specific practices. As a main theoretical framework, this work employs an analytics of government, providing an understanding of the enactment of such dispositive for innovation through the analysis of concrete practices of government. In examining three practices, that is, shepherding, accountability and action at a distance, I propose a critical understanding of the role of technology as an end and as a means for the practice of government. Furthermore, I suggest that revealing a dispositive for innovation in education is not sufficient unless the analysis includes a deep reflection on technologies and their implications for the constitution of subjects.
Education policies for the use and appropriation of ICT (information and communication technologies) in Latin America are in their best moment. All across the region are emerging educational innovation systems aiming to close the gap of inequity and guarantee the access of quality education. Beyond a common discourse analysis approach on these national programs and their promises of development and productivity, it is necessary to understand what occurs locally when policy translations take place, that is, mobilization of actors, artifacts and heterogeneous practices. Drawing on policy enactment theory as a theoretical framework and using a comparative case study design, it is shown that beyond a technical rationality of ICT policy implementation or its interpretation by different actors, the problem of policy translation deserves a critical analysis from a sociomaterial approach. In order to underpin this work, a set of national programs for ICT integration are analyzed in Colombia, in three municipal contexts in which policy translation is performed through heterogeneous but effective forms enacting discourses on innovation and quality in education. This work is also a methodological contribution to map translations of educational policies, useful for researchers on this field.
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