Case Study: Cluj-Napoca University

Valentin Muntean from the Universitatea de Medicina si Farmacie ‘Iuliu Hateiganu” Cluj-Napoca, Romania, describes how this institution has used VPs.

Background

We have used the Web-SP VP system in the following areas:

  • Medicine: pre-clinical and clinical undergraduate, postgraduate/residency, continuing professional development
  • Nursing: clinical undergraduate and postgraduate

They all include multimedia material, images, movies and audio recordings. The interactivity is based on quantitative and qualitative feedback, hyperlinks and expert comments.
Back to top

Educational Scenarios

The VPs are used as supplementary learning and formative feedback resource for students to use a self-directed learning. In problem-based tutorials the VPs replaced paper cases in PBL tutorials.
Back to top

Curricula Integration

Our VPs match the curricular learning objectives and are integrated as useful additions to the lectures, seminars and clinical bedside activities. They will replace the paper-cases in PBL tutorials.
Back to top

Integration With Other e-Learning Opportunities

VPs are partly integrated with the following:

  • The medical algorithms for clinical situations and diseases, available here.
  • Imatest online lectures, available here.

Back to top

Technical Integration

All VPs are accessible through Web-SP on the ‘Iliu Hateiganu’ university server. At the moment access is restricted to staff and students enrolled in the VP pilot program.
Back to top

VPs For Assessment

The VPs we currently use are in the WebSp system, which is mainly designed for auto-evaluation (formative). It is our intention to develop VPs in other players / mini-cases for both formative and summative evaluation.
Back to top

Evaluation of VPs

A survey of students opinions on Web-SO cases was carried out in December 2007. The questionnaire was rated on a Likert scale (1 = Strongly Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree). There were 25 respondents (78% of 32 5th year medical students studying the clinical modules of endocrinology and surgery).

The students had to choose one of the four available cases and solve it in less than 90 minutes, and then to answer the anonymous electronic questionnaire.

Most of the students consider that working with Web-SP was fun (4.2+/-0.91) (M+/-SD) and easy (4.04+/-0.84) and the online format appealing (3.6+/-1.08).

The cases were interesting (4.16+/-0.75), the knowledge base of the cases appropriate (4.52+/-0.65) and the key feature of the cases important for clinical practice (3.76+/-1.09).

The questions and answers were not as straightforward and the illustration not as good as they should be, (3.28+/-0.94) and (3.12+/-0.93) respectively.

The feedback on diagnostic and treatment decisions was not approrpiate (2.92+/-) – we had little time to evaluate and give feedback to the student) – and the overall difficulty of the cases was inappropriate (2.8+/-0.96) – the students were at the beginning of the endocrinology and surgery modules.

There were few technical problems,= with the software (satisfied 3.96+/-1.14). Most of the students prefer computer cases to paper-based cases (4.2+/-0.91) and wish to have computer simulations in the future curriculum (4.40+/- 0.84).
Back to top

Future Plans

We intend to develop our VP collection in order to cover the main topics and objectives for the undergraduate medicine and existing nursing courses. We will also develop the Web-SP system to better fit the needs of different medical specialities. And we will develop VPs in other players and mini-cases for formative and summative assessment.
Back to top

Any Advice?

  • Identify and develop the necessary support, staff and resources
  • Involve a critical number of professors in VP production
  • Identify the areas and curriculum topics for VP production in agreement with the learning objectives and educational outcomes of the medical school
  • Update existing cases and add new resources and features
  • Implement the VPs in both learning and evaluation, formative and summative

Back to top