Category: Digital

IMPLEMnT: Teaching, technology and community

What is IMPLEMnT?

Last year James Moss and I (Katie Stripe) of the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) and Alexandra ‘Chippy’ Compton, medical student and ICU president, received a grant from the Excellence Fund in Learning and Teaching Innovation to develop a tool that will help educators navigate their way through today’s technology-saturated world in order to more effectively use digital methods in their teaching. Ultimately we hope to create a tool that will help anyone in a teaching role, be that a lecturer, a doctor teaching at the bedside, a lab demonstrator, or any one of the huge variety of educators we have in the faculty and across college, to make informed decisions about which technologies are most appropriate for the type of teaching they are providing. There are many sites listing the myriad technologies that can be used in learning but none, so far, that have combined that information with teaching methodology to give practical advice on what to use and when.

Embarking on this project we rather naively thought it would be simple to curate a list of technologies and teaching methodologies then join them together. We were wrong, very wrong! Once we began looking at the technology used in teaching it became clear that there an overwhelming number so we hope to make this into a college-wide community project by asking colleagues and student partners which technologies they use and how. We can then build a bank of technologies that grows dynamically as technology develops but is also relevant to our teaching community.

We have already constructed a framework at implemntproject.com where we have so far compiled a small number of technologies, however, we have a list of over 300 more unfinished plus the thousands that we have not yet encountered. Since IMPLEMnT aims to be a tool that works for people from across college it seems fitting that those teachers should be able to contribute. If you have ideas or suggestions you can contact us through the site, via twitter @implemntproject or you can join us for a mass online co-authoring session on 25 April at 12pm. This event will have two face-to-face sessions running at the South Kensington campus where staff can come together and contribute technologies, methodologies and case studies via post-it notes, marker pens and other more traditional means, and running alongside this there will be several online rooms which you can drop in and out of depending on experience and interest: (more…)

New system for recording holiday and sick leave

The College will be implementing a new availability and absence management system, called TeamSeer. The system has been designed to record and manage staff availability such as holiday, sickness and other absence types required by the College. The system has been piloted across the College, and feedback has been gathered to ensure it meets the College requirements.

The go-live date for the new system will be in time for the new annual leave year on 1 February 2018.

The system is a user-friendly online planner, which will be accessible using your College username and password. When the system goes live, you will receive an email from TeamSeer with a link that will give you access to your account. In the meantime, if you would like to familiarise yourself with the system you can view video tutorials at the weblinks below: (more…)

South Kensington Campus – Centralised booking system for meeting rooms

There is now an online booking system available for Faulty of Medicine meeting rooms in the Sir Alexander Building and Flowers buildings, South Kensington Campus.   The new system has the advantages to gather in a single place meeting rooms with information on location, equipment and capacity.  Importantly,  booking is now done faster and easier by providing room availability updated daily.

Please check in the link:

http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/staff/meetingrooms/

I would like to thank Faculty of Medicine for support and give special thanks to people that made possible this project: Michele Foot, who coordinated the team, and the help from Taylor Bennie, Jeremy Jones, James Moore, Al McCartney, Andrew Pritchard, Peter Moore and Kylie Glasgow.

We hope you find the new system useful and we would appreciate any comments and suggestions to improve it.

Dr Vania Braga
Reader in Cell-cell Adhesion Signalling
National Heart & Lung Institute
Faculty of Medicine

The School of Medicine Mobile Medical Education Pilot Project

The School issued iPads Mini to students in years 5 and 6 of the MBBS course at the beginning of the 2013/14 academic term.

iPad_newsletter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key implementations introduced as part of the pilot have focused on the following areas:

iBooks

iBooks have been developed in order to standardise the delivery of course related materials for the different clinical attachments. Once the iBooks are downloaded on the iPads, they can be accessed offline. The iBooks offer a range of interactions designed by academics to make the learning experience more engaging for students. The image below shows some of the iBooks developed for years 5 and 6.

iPad_books_images_cropped

Students can download the iBooks via the Mobile Device Management System (MDM): AirWatch Secure Content Locker provided by ICT.

Overall, the feedback received from academics and students has been very positive. They like the fact the iBooks can be accessed off-line and they provide a lot of engaging interactions.

The iBooks developed can be accessed via the iPad Project Organisation in Blackboard: http://bit.ly/1rlBKXF

Electronic submissions and signoffs

iPad_lectureElectronic submissions and signoffs have been piloted using the eForms iPad App. It allows submissions of assessments (end of attachment, DOPS, etc.) via student iPads.  The system allows clinicians to electronically sign forms online/offline and to receive an electronic copy of the submissions via email. Students also receive confirmation via email and administrators can track submissions online.

SharePoint has also been piloted for electronic submissions in years 3, 5 and 6 to accommodate open-ended questions requiring formatting as well as submitting attachments (PDF, Word documents, etc.).

In total, over 100 electronic submissions have been introduced in years 5 & 6. Feedback so far has been positive although some students have expressed preference for paper based submissions.

iCalendars

iCalendars have also been deployed for some clinical attachments (nearly 100 iCalendars), allowing students to access their calendars/timetables on their iPads and/or smartphones. Due to the positive feedback received from students on the use of iCalendars, the School has decided to implement iCalendars for all clinical attachments from January 2015.

Other Apps

We have also received positive feedback on the use of virtual clickers especially during the Pathology course. The students have also been very receptive to the use of the BMJ Best Practice App provided by the library.

The work done so far on the Mobile Medical Education Pilot Project provides evidence of the benefits in the provision of electronic submissions, iCalendars and the distribution of course and learning related materials on the students’ devices via iBooks. The digitisation of clinical related assessments (e-forms) provides a more efficient and robust mechanism to audit assessment submissions during attachments.

A Working Group will be setup to evaluate the iPad pilot and make recommendations to the School on the way forward in relation to the School’s Mobile Learning Strategy. The recommendations will be made available by February 2015.

A CPD course: ‘Creating Mobile Medical Education: Successful Implementation in Practice’ has been setup based on the experience gained during this project at the School. All the implementations carried out as part of this project will be demonstrated during the course.

Guest speakers from Manchester and Leeds Medical Schools will also present their latest developments on Mobile Medical Education. For further information about the course please visit: http://bit.ly/1AR24tQ

For further information contact us at: elearning.medicine@imperial.ac.uk

iPad_last_image

Dr Maria Toro-Troconis
E-Learning Strategy and Development Manager
Faculty of Medicine

Symplectic Elements – common questions answered

You should review the Symplectic Elements website guides http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/symplectic/userguide

We have answered some of the most frequently asked questions received within the Faculty of Medicine:

Symplectic is not retrieving my publications – Review your search settings

If the automated search performed by Symplectic elements is not retrieving your publications, there are a few things you can do to address this.

The more criteria you include in your search settings, the more restrictive the search becomes. Therefore you should tweak your settings by:

  • Removing addresses – it is likely that you will only be publishing under “Imperial College London”. Therefore, having “Imperial” will be enough – anything else is not needed and should be removed.
    • If you have published at another institute, and would like these included in your Publications listing, then you can include these as well. It is recommended that you use very specific address information exactly as they appear on your publications. For example “Oxford” would be sufficient to pick up items published at “University of Oxford”

address

  • Ensure your name variants appear EXACTLY the same as the name under which you publish

names

  • Reduce the number of keywords to broaden the search (having too many keywords will further restrict the search)

Adding a publication via the ID number

This will force Symplectic Elements to retrieve a specific publication.

  • Within the search settings, scroll to the bottom of the page
  • Enter the ID number (for example, Publications on PubMed show this as “PMID”)
  • Press the + button
  • Press Save

id

When the next scheduled search takes place, it will retrieve that publication.

My publications are not appearing in the correct order on my PWP

  • Within Symplectic Elements, go to “Account Settings” in the top right of the screen
  • In the section “Update Sort for External Systems” choose an order for the desired category. For example, if your publications are not appearing in the right order, choose an order for “Publication” such as “Date (descending)” and then click “Update”

account

  • THEN go to your PWP, login and click on the “Administration” tab.
  • In the section “Symplectic Elements” press the circular arrow icon. This will force Symplectic to update the information on your page based on the sort order you have chosen in Symplectic.

symplecticrefresh

I get an error message when I try to accept or decline publications

In our experience this can be fixed by clearing the Cache in your browser, closing it down completely and then trying again.

To find out how to clear the cahce in your browser, please visit http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser%27s-Cache

Game focused on improving antibiotic prescribing launched


Increasing antimicrobial resistance has been identified as a global threat to health. To arrest such threat, a variety of measures have been implemented to improve the quality of antimicrobial prescribing. But whilst increasing prescriber knowledge has proven easier to achieve, maintaining adequate engagement with recommended prescribing behaviours remains harder to accomplish due to psychological and behavioural influences. In other clinical settings, the use of serious electronic games coupled with the application of game mechanics have been successfully employed to resolve similar behavioural challenges, allowing players to experience complicated clinical scenarios and gain technical skills without any negative consequences on patients. In 2013 we proposed to investigate if a serious smartphone prescribing game would be effective in supporting and encouraging the prudent use of antimicrobials in acute care.

In collaboration with a commercial game company, we developed a series of virtual patients that presented signs and symptoms of different infectious pathologies including community- and healthcare-acquired pneumonia, viral and bacterial meningitis, urinary tract infection, influenza, cellulitis and C. difficile colitis, among others. Players gradually receive clinical information for each patient to help them decide the diagnosis and management for the case, and can opt to prescribe oral antibiotics, broad- or narrow-spectrum intravenous (IV) antibiotics, request further tests or discharge the patient without any treatment. Timely and accurate diagnosis and clinical management are rewarded by the scoring algorithm, whilst too conservative or hurried decisions are penalised. Recognising the social interactions that occur during a prescribing decision and the impact of such decisions on different professional groups, we include behavioural nudges offered by professionals, patients and hospital management, depending on each player’s performance.

We used several gamification elements to focus players’ mind on desired antimicrobial prescribing behaviours and to highlight any unintended consequences. The user interface can be personalized and timers and scores, together with increasing case difficulty were introduced to sustain engagement with the game. Immediate feedback after each case and tailored messages informed players about their performance. Delayed consequences of prescribing decisions were explicit for players; for example, using IV antibiotics too frequently results in cannula-site infections which will reappear as follow-up cases, increasing players workload.

The game (which can be downloaded here) from was launched on 6th May to coincide with the international patient safety day promoted by the World Health Organization. The concept and progress were recently presented at the 16th International Conference on Infectious Diseases in Cape Town (South Africa) and the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Barcelona (Spain), attracting much interest as no other research group has developed a similar initiative.

Sustaining appropriate prescribing behaviours remains a challenge for antimicrobial stewardship initiatives worldwide. Serious games delivered on mobile devices can complement the experiential learning of prescribers. Games can be useful to reinforce desired behaviours, elicit the relationships between different professional groups involved in prescribing decision-making, and highlight any unintended consequences of antimicrobial prescribing. Serious games may be an affordable and feasible solution to address the behavioural and social influences on prescribing.

Enrique Castro Sánchez
Academic Research Nurse
National Centre for Infection Prevention and Management