Interactive anatomical and surgical live stream lectures improve students' academic performance in applied clinical anatomy

Abstract

Tuebingen's Sectio Chirurgica (TSC) is an innovative, interactive, multimedia, and transdisciplinary teaching method designed to complement dissection courses. The Tuebingen's Sectio Chirurgica (TSC) allows clinical anatomy to be taught via interactive live stream surgeries moderated by an anatomist. This method aims to provide an application-oriented approach to teaching anatomy that offers students a deeper learning experience. A cohort study was devised to determine whether students who participated in the TSC were better able to solve clinical application questions than students who did not participate. A total of 365 students participated in the dissection course during the winter term of the 2012/2013 academic year. The final examination contained 40 standard multiple-choice (S-MC) and 20 clinically-applied multiple-choice (CA-MC) items. The CA-MC items referred to clinical cases but could be answered solely using anatomical knowledge. Students who regularly participated in the TSC answered the CA-MC questions significantly better than the control group (75% and 65%, respectively; P < 0.05, Mann-Whitney U test). The groups exhibited no differences on the S-MC questions (85% and 82.5%, respectively; P > 0.05). The CA-MC questions had a slightly higher level of difficulty than the S-MC questions (0.725 and 0.801, respectively; P = 0.083). The discriminatory power of the items was comparable (S-MC median Pearson correlations: 0.321; CA-MC: 0.283). The TSC successfully teaches the clinical application of anatomical knowledge. Students who attended the TSC in addition to the dissection course were able to answer CA-MC questions significantly better than students who did not attend the TSC. Thus, attending the TSC in addition to the dissection course supported students' clinical learning goals. Anat Sci Educ 10: 46-52. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.

Expanding Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine Teaching through Internationally Livestreamed Academic Forums

“…Running a high-quality stream is a labour-intensive process requiring additional equipment, prior planning, and a dedicated member of the committee responsible for running and editing the stream. 6,7 Perhaps paradoxically, interruptions or poor stream quality tends to lead to greater dissatisfaction with the event than there would be if no stream were offered at all, as expectations for an equivalent or at least comparable audience experience quickly grow. There are concerns that livestreaming lectures will lead to reduced numbers attending in person for convenience reasons and this is in keeping with conclusions drawn from other work.…”

“…An alternative method used by other authors is to password protect access so that only professionals who have registered prior to the event can view the livestream. 5,7 Attention to the feedback alongside improvements in our equipment and technique allowed us to improve the average livestream score from 4.5 to 4.75. This was matched by an improvement in audio quality (from 3.25 to 4.5), video quality (from 3.25 to 4.5) and stream accessibility (from 4.1 to 4.8).…”

Teaching & Learning Tips 5: Making lectures more “active”

“…[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Learning benefits include improved attention span, promotion of higher order learning (e.g., analysis, synthesis), prolonged retention of information, and higher performance on written exams. 6,7,9,[11][12][13][14] Importantly, making lectures participatory and interactive is an essential component of active learning in the large-group didactic setting. 11,12 In an interactive lecture, for example, learners may take time to self-reflect and discuss with peers about how the new information compares to what they already know, which can lead to more durable learning.…”

“…Though variably defined in the literature (see Teaching & Learning Tips 3: Active learning strategies ), active learning has demonstrated benefits over passive learning at all levels of medical training . Learning benefits include improved attention span, promotion of higher order learning (e.g., analysis, synthesis), prolonged retention of information, and higher performance on written exams …”

Acquiring Clinical Knowledge from an Online Video Platform: A Randomized Controlled Experiment on the Relevance of Integrating Anatomical Information and Clinical Practice

“…In addition, videos have become a popular tool for anatomical sciences education, in particular recordings of lectures in an auditorium (Nieder and Nagy, ; Nieder and Borges, ). It has already been shown that videos can be a useful format for learning (Romanov and Nevgi, ; Shiozawa et al, ). Students may benefit especially from watching videos repeatedly, resulting in better performance (Nieder and Borges, ; Autry et al, ; Topping, ; Choi‐Lundberg et al, ; Phillips et al, ; Alameddine et al, ).…”