Development and implementation of an online platform for curriculum mapping in medical education

Abstract

Objectives Nowadays universities face ever-increasing demands on quality of education, which is crucial from perspective of future graduates. In face of the need of constant quality improvements of medical curricula, it is important to seek strategies for their efficient management. The general trend is to develop electronic support tools to streamline the curricular design, analysis and harmonization. Methods Based on the requirements we have identified by the needs analysis among curriculum designers, teachers and managers at five universities involved in the Building Curriculum Infrastructure in Medical Education (BCIME) project, and evidence published in literature on curriculum development, we have developed methodological guidelines on curriculum innovations and a software-based tools that help manage, map and analyse curricula in the medical and healthcare study fields. Results In this paper, we share our experiences with building and implementation of EDUportfolio, an online platform developed within our consortium and intended to facilitate harmonisation and optimisation of medical outcome-based curricula. Its functionalities and outputs were verified by pilot mapping of Anatomy curricula as taught at partner universities in five European countries. Conclusions The visualisation and the analysis of described curriculum data using natural language processing techniques revealed both the hidden relations between curriculum building blocks and a set of overlaps and gaps in curricula. In addition, we demonstrate both the usability of the platform in the context of the involved academic environments and the capability to map and compare curricula across different institutions and different countries.

Comparison of Malaysia's Bachelor of Dental Technology curriculum with three other countries: Proposing a basic curriculum framework

“…It exposes teaching materials, techniques and assessment methods whilst also allowing curricular transparency and communicability. These are critical for explaining and comprehending when, how and what is taught, as well as achieving intended student learning outcomes by demonstrating the relationships between all components of the curriculum 26,27 …”

“…These are critical for explaining and comprehending when, how and what is taught, as well as achieving intended student learning outcomes by demonstrating the relationships between all components of the curriculum. 26,27 The present study also managed to design and develop a curriculum framework that could form the foundation for a BDT programme in Malaysia and may be potentially applicable to a range of international dental education settings. The framework supports dental educators and curriculum developers in facilitating discussions regarding course material and highlights areas within curricula where linkages between theories and skills acquired in the field of dental technology can be established.…”

Software Development and Tool Support for Curriculum Design: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…Regarding this matter, out of the 21 articles that mention alignment, 15 pertain to tools for the meso-curriculum level, while the remaining six relate to tools for the micro-curriculum level. At the meso-curriculum level, the focus, in general, is on aligning course objectives with the program [92,104,106,108] and with industry needs [89,99,100,107]. The microcurricular level focuses on learning outcomes with assessment activities, learning methodologies, etc.…”

“…In general, the issues that these tools attempt to solve are beyond the alignment of curricular elements. The solutions presented can range from software systems [14,91,95,[102][103][104]107,108] to models based on ontologies, UML or quality models [79,80,86,89,90,92]. Arafeh seeks to improve micro-curriculum and meso-curriculum alignment and coherence through a course-level content mapping tool that helps better understand course content and products and plan and communicate a syllabus [101].…”

Online Education User Behaviour Based on Machine Learning

“…User behaviour tends to be blind and usually random over a certain period of time, but in the long run it tends to have a certain pattern. In addition, the behaviour of individual users is often simple and extremely irregular, but a comprehensive study of the behaviour of a large number of users can reveal regularity [12][13].…”