Virtual patients as a form of educational intervention can take many forms and can provide highly effective ways of addressing reduced student access to real patients, the need for standardised and well-structured educational patient encounters, and opportunities for students to practice in safe and responsive environments. However, virtual patients can also be complicated and costly to develop. As a result collaborative and distributed development is best suited to their widespread take up. This paper considers the development and use of virtual patients and the steps that have been taken to support authors in making this approach more sustainable and adaptable. In particular, this has involved the development of a common data interoperability standard, which in turn has engaged a number of communities that have developed, or are developing, virtual patient commons, consisting of shared resources, tools and knowledge for mutual benefit. The paper illustrates how innovative and otherwise difficult to sustain models for supporting and extending healthcare education, such as virtual patients, can be supported using a commons approach with commonly agreed data standards and specifications at their core.
OpenCourseWare (OCW) represents an innovative and cost-effective opportunity for institutions to take a more active role in strengthening health sciences education worldwide. OCW content can provide a supplement to curricula available in resource-rich settings, as well as provide much of the basic content critical to teaching and research in resource-limited health education environments. Educational institutions worldwide have the opportunity to explore how OCW and other open tools and materials can supplement efforts to build health education capacity to address global shortages of healthcare workers. Tufts University has worked to leverage open, digital resources to support medical education since 1994 with the creation of the Tufts University Sciences Knowledgebase (TUSK). This experience has yielded vital lessons for institutions interested in OCW, including: effectively motivating faculty participation; managing the inherent complexity of open publishing of health sciences content due to its rapidly evolving nature and reliance on copyrighted materials; generating support through internal and external communication throughout the process; and creating institutional systems that ensure the long-term sustainability of OCW initiatives.
This study aimed to evaluate the relationship among dental students' attendance at class lectures, use of online lecture materials, and performance in didactic courses. The study was conducted with second-year predoctoral students at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine during the fall semester of 2014. Three basic science and three preclinical dental courses were selected for evaluation. Online usage for each participant was collected, and a survey with questions about attendance and online behavior was conducted. The final grade for each participant in each selected course was obtained and matched with his or her online usage and attendance. Out of a total 190 students, 146 (77%) participated. The results showed no significant relationship between students' grades and their class attendance or online usage except for a weak negative relationship between class attendance and online usage for the Epidemiology course (p<0.001) and the overall preclinical dental courses (p=0.03). Although the results did not show strong relationships among class attendance, online usage, and course grades, most of the students reported that having the online resources in addition to the lectures was helpful.Dr. Azab is a graduate student,
We conclude that CT scanning of cadavers produces high-quality images that can be used to develop VPs. Although the use of the VPs was optional and fewer than half of the students had an imaged cadaver for dissection, 59 of the 172 (34%) students accessed and reviewed the cases and images positively and were very encouraging for us to continue.
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