Improving case study research in medical education: A systematised review

Context:Case study research (CSR) is a research approach that guides holistic investigation of a real phenomenon. This approach may be useful in medical education to provide critical analyses of teaching and learning, and to reveal the underlying elements of leadership and innovation. There are variations in the definition, design and choice of methods, which may diminish the value of CSR as a form of inquiry.Objectives:This paper reports an analysis of CSR papers in the medical education literature. The review aims to describe how CSR has been used and how more consistency might be achieved to promote understanding and value.Methods:A systematised review was undertaken to quantify the number of CSR articles published in scholarly medical education journals over the last 10 years. A typology of CSR proposed by Thomas and Myers to integrate the various ways in which CSR is constructed was applied.Results:Of the 362 full‐text articles assessed, 290 were excluded as they did not meet the eligibility criteria; 76 of these were titled ‘case study’. Of the 72 included articles, 50 used single‐case and 22 multi‐case design; 46 connected with theory and 26 were atheoretical. In some articles it was unclear what the subject was or how the subject was being analysed.Conclusions:In this study, more articles titled ‘case study’ failed than succeeded in meeting the eligibility criteria. Well‐structured, clearly written CSR in medical education has the potential to increase understanding of more complex situations, but this review shows there is considerable variation in how it is conducted, which potentially limits its utility and translation into education practice. Case study research might be of more value in medical education if researchers were to follow more consistently principles of design, and harness rich observation with connection of ideas and knowledge to engage the reader in what is most interesting

The virtual playground: an educational virtual reality environment for evaluating interactivity and conceptual learning

The research presented in this paper aims at investigating user interaction in immersive virtual learning environments (VLEs), focusing on the role and the effect of interactivity on conceptual learning. The goal has been to examine if the learning of young users improves through interacting in (i.e. exploring, reacting to, and acting upon) an immersive virtual environment (VE) compared to non interactive or non-immersive environments. Empirical work was carried out with more than 55 primary school students between the ages of 8 and 12, in different between-group experiments: an exploratory study, a pilot study, and a large-scale experiment. The latter was conducted in a virtual environment designed to simulate a playground. In this ‘Virtual Playground’, each participant was asked to complete a set of tasks designed to address arithmetical ‘fractions’ problems. Three different conditions, two experimental virtual reality (VR) conditions and a non-VR condition, that varied the levels of activity and interactivity, were designed to evaluate how children accomplish the various tasks. Pre-tests, post-tests, interviews, video, audio, and log files were collected for each participant, and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. This paper presents a selection of case studies extracted from the qualitative analysis, which illustrate the variety of approaches taken by children in the VEs in response to visual cues and system feedback. Results suggest that the fully interactive VE aided children in problem solving but did not provide as strong evidence of conceptual change as expected; rather, it was the passive VR environment, where activity was guided by a virtual robot, that seemed to support student reflection and recall, leading to indications of conceptual change

How can exploratory learning with games and simulations within the curriculum be most effectively evaluated?

There have been few attempts to introduce frameworks that can help support tutors evaluate educational games and simulations that can be most effective in their particular learning context and subject area. The lack of a dedicated framework has produced a significant impediment for uptake of games and simulations particularly in formal learning contexts. This paper aims to address this shortcoming by introducing a four-dimensional framework for helping tutors to evaluate the potential of using games- and simulation- based learning in their practice, and to support more critical approaches to this form of games and simulations. The four-dimensional framework is applied to two examples from practice to test its efficacy and structure critical reflection upon practice

Addressing the learners' needs for specific and constructive feedback

This paper discusses an on-going project which proposes to make feedback to students more personal, explicit and more useful as a method of further engaging students. It addresses an issue that has recently been identified by the researchers where students on an Engineering programme were not recognising the presence of feedback on their assessed work. Feedback is central to the process of learning. However it has been widely accepted, through tools such as the UK National Student Survey, that students are still relatively dissatisfied with the feedback they have received. There is therefore a need to ensure that feedback given to students is specific and constructive in terms of helping them move their own learning forward. A pilot is being carried out with two Engineering classes, offering students the option to request specific feedback on their class tests. The students are asked to identify the areas of their work they require feedback on through the completion of a ‘feedback request label’. Staff can then respond to the feedback requests and issue students with personal and relevant feedback. Initial findings from the project have shown students to have clear expectations regarding the type of feedback they want. Students identified that they expect clear and legible feedback, which draws together feedback comments from throughout their work and provides a summary of how they could move forwards. Findings have also identified some differences in expectations and perceptions of feedback between the Level 3 and Level 4 students involved in the project

Research on ICT in K-12 schools e A review of experimental and survey-based studies in computers & education 2011 to 2015

International audienceWhat is the role of a journal? Is it to follow the research or lead it? For the former, it is to serve as an archival record of the scholarship in a field. It can serve to permit the research community to engage with each other via the written record. But, for the latter, it can serve the research community by pointing out gaps in the research based on the archival record. This review is intended to do just that

Lines-of-inquiry and sources of evidence in work-based research

There is synergy between the investigative practices of police detectives and social scientists, including work-based researchers. They both develop lines-of-inquiry and draw on multiple sources of evidence in order to make inferences about people, trends and phenomena. However, the principles associated with lines-of-inquiry and sources of evidence have not so far been examined in relation to work-based research methods, which are often unexplored or ill-defined in the published literature. We explore this gap by examining the various direct and indirect lines-of-inquiry and the main sources of primary and secondary evidence used in work-based research, which is especially relevant because some work-based researchers are also police detectives. Clearer understanding of these intersections will be useful in emerging professional contexts where the work-based researcher, the detective, and the social scientist cohere in the one person and their research project. The case we examined was a Professional Studies programme at a university in Australia, which has many police detectives doing work-based research, and from their experience we conclude there is synergy between work-based research and lines of enquiry. Specifically, in the context of research methods, we identify seven sources of evidence: 1) creative, unstructured, and semi-structured interviews; 2) structured interviews; 3) consensus group methods; 4) surveys; 5) documentation and archives; 6) direct observations and participant observations; and 7) physical or cultural artefacts, and show their methodological features related to data and method type, reliability, validity, and types of analysis, along with their respective advantages and disadvantages. This study thereby unpacks and isolates those characteristics of work-based research which are relevant to a growing body of literature related to the messy, co-produced and wicked problems of private companies, government agencies, and non-government organisations and the research methods used to investigate them

Effective nursing care of children and young people outside hospital

THIS ARTICLE presents an exploratory study that was financed and commissioned by Health Education, North Central and East London (NCEL), and the local education and training board (LETB); it was undertaken by the University of Hertfordshire between February and August 2014. The research was funded to explore the educational needs of the nursing workforce in relation to out-of-hospital care for children and young people in the UK. The data will be used to inform the development of service provision. Read More: http://journals.rcni.com/doi/10.7748/ncyp.27.5.28.e610 Open Access with Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). Copyright © 2017 RCN Publishing Company Ltd.Aim To assess the preparation required to ensure a workforce of nurses who can provide high quality out-of-hospital services for children and young people. Methods Using mixed methods, questionnaires were sent to young people and community children’s nursing teams, interviews were conducted with academic staff and clinical nurses, and focus groups were undertaken with pre-registration children’s nursing students. Findings Nurses’ communication skills and clinical abilities were most important to young people. There is a range of opinions about optimum out-of-hospital clinical experience. Pre- and post-qualification education and recruitment in this area, therefore, need attention. Conclusion Out-of-hospital care presents problems, but is developing rapidly. Adequate, updated training, supervision and resources are needed.Peer reviewe

A methodology for exploring emergence in learning communities

Learning communities are becoming increasingly complex in nature, often being used to drive multiple agendas. For example, there is an increasing move to develop learning cities which seek to draw on synergies to both improve citizen learning and skills as well as economic regeneration. Such synergy-driven learning communities, of which the learning cities are but one example, seek to utilise interaction to develop 'emergent products', be it at the individual level or the system-wide level, which could not be produced in isolation. Successfully enabling emergence is critical to their success. Designing for specific types of emergence is however difficult given the intrinsic unpredictability of complex systems. Insight into the intrinsic characteristics of these synergy-driven learning communities and how their interaction leads to emergence over time is required. This paper reports on the methodology developed to explore these highly complex learning communities. The approach adopted was to combine exploratory case studies which established the intrinsic characteristics of the learning communities with an exploration of emergence guided by a meta-level conceptual framework of emergence. This was augmented by secondary data to aid triangulation and provide rigour. As well as discussing the rationale for the adopted approach, implementation issues and the rich information set obtained are discussed using specific case examples. Findings from the investigations led to recommendations regarding future development of appropriate methods for seeding and managing such complex learning communities. The meta level framework means the approach may be readily adapted to other complex social system