Telemedicine Training in Undergraduate Medical Education: Mixed-Methods Review.

BACKGROUND: Telemedicine has grown exponentially in the United States over the past few decades, and contemporary trends in the health care environment are serving to fuel this growth into the future. Therefore, medical schools are learning to incorporate telemedicine competencies into the undergraduate medical education of future physicians so that they can more effectively leverage telemedicine technologies for improving the quality of care, increasing patient access, and reducing health care expense. This review articulates the efforts of allopathic-degree-granting medical schools in the United States to characterize and systematize the learnings that have been generated thus far in the domain of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this review was to collect and outline the current experiences and learnings that have been generated as medical schools have sought to implement telemedicine capacity-building into undergraduate medical education. METHODS: We performed a mixed-methods review, starting with a literature review via Scopus, tracking with Excel, and an email outreach effort utilizing telemedicine curriculum data gathered by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. This outreach included 70 institutions and yielded 7 interviews, 4 peer-reviewed research papers, 6 online documents, and 3 completed survey responses. RESULTS: There is an emerging, rich international body of learning being generated in the field of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education. The integration of telemedicine-based lessons, ethics case-studies, clinical rotations, and even teleassessments are being found to offer great value for medical schools and their students. Most medical students find such training to be a valuable component of their preclinical and clinical education for a variety of reasons, which include fostering greater familiarity with telemedicine and increased comfort with applying telemedical approaches in their future careers. CONCLUSIONS: These competencies are increasingly important in tackling the challenges facing health care in the 21st century, and further implementation of telemedicine curricula into undergraduate medical education is highly merited

Slavic Folklore, the Library, and the Web: A Case-study of Subject-Specific Collaborative Information Literacy at the University of Kansas

This case-study describes the on-going integration of Information Literacy (IL) into a large undergraduate general education course on Slavic folklore at the University of Kansas. The purpose of the case-study is to provide practical examples that Slavic librarians and other colleagues may find useful in the development of their own customized library instruction program

Case Study Integration in the Undergraduate Classroom: Can We Enhance Willingness to Communicate?

The agricultural and natural resources (ANR) industry faces many pressing issues involving animal health, biotechnology, climate change, food safety, food security, invasive species, marketing and trade, and water. Undergraduate students must be prepared and willing to communicate about these issues, which can often be complex and controversial when entering the ANR workforce. This study sought to determine if the integration of case studies influenced students’ self-perceived willingness to communicate about ANR issues while taking a communication course that teaches about ANR issues. A pre/posttest, experimental research design assessed students’ willingness to communicate about nine key ANR issues identified by the United States Department of Agriculture as challenge areas with case study integration used as the treatment. Using three undergraduate courses at three universities as the sample, a significant positive difference in willingness to communicate about all nine issues was found between the experimental and control groups. Based on these findings, it is recommended that case studies be integrated into classrooms when teaching about ANR issues. Future research should determine if this impact occurs when the case studies are used in undergraduate courses outside of the communication courses used as the foundation in this study, in other science-focused undergraduate and graduate courses, and in non-formal settings such as extension education programs

Historical Development of the Undergraduate Educational Model at BIT from the Perspective of Suzhi Education

From the perspective of suzhi education, this study analyses the historical development of the undergraduate educational model at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). It could be argued that BIT’s talent-cultivating system’s transformations from 1940 to 2020 echo Chinese higher education’s reform and development. This study concludes that BIT has experienced four phases: (1) from advocacy for general-specialized education’s integration to general education’s disappearance, (2) from the rectification of specialized education to the germination of suzhi and general education, (3) the flourishing of suzhi education and general education, and (4) the establishment of the Shuyuan System. The case of BIT reflects Chinese higher education’s development and the process of transforming from meritocracy to popularization. Chinese universities have changed their paradigm from emphasizing specialized education to highlighting suzhi education, as well as from focusing on training students into specialists to stressing students’ holistic development

Utilising the Healy and Jenkin’s Research Teaching and Curriculum Design Nexus to transform undergraduate nursing research communities of practice

In science, research is known to be a diligent systematic inquiry into nature and society or both. It assists in validating and refining existing knowledge and generating new knowledge. Lecturers and scholars have embraced the integration of evidence-based practice into the nursing education curriculum in numerous ways. Although the learning competencies necessary for research competencies amongst undergraduate nurses include an understanding of the basic concepts and processes of research methods, it does not adequately support student preparedness for the attainment of postgraduate research competencies. The design of this study adopted a qualitative, exploratory and descriptive course of enquiry that explored current pedagogical research practices amongst lecturers and supervisors. A case study approach utilising, specifically, a cross-case analysis helped provide a clear picture of institutional pedagogical practices related to the topic of inquiry and its implementation thereof. The cases from approved local, national and international higher education institutions formed the setting for the study. Lecturers facilitating and supervising undergraduate and postgraduate research studies comprised the target population of a purposive sampling selection. In this study, the authors utilised the Healey and Jenkins Teaching Nexus to show that the research engagement of students and nursing research communities of practice can be strengthened if embraced by sound pedagogical practices. The Nexus outlines four concepts that guide the pedagogical practice of the research module that promotes undergraduate students as researchers. The authors of this article concluded that it was necessary to engage students as producers and not merely as consumers of knowledge. In this study, the researchers also utilised the Nexus to show students’ engagement in fostering different teaching approaches to research knowledge acquisition

The impact of synchronous inter-networked teacher training in ICT integration.

This research aimed to provide fresh perspectives and experiences in technology-based learning, in an endeavour to produce new knowledge that would further inform the literature on the utilisation of technology in education. The Case Study research (Merriam, 1988) attempted to develop an understanding of the change in pre-service teacher trainees' pedagogical practices in the integration of ICT in learning environments during a 12-week undergraduate course where synchronous networked tasks were developed and implemented. The contributions by the trainees (n=16) to the process of the iterative task design, post-task discussions, and commentaries on a Bulletin Board System, provided insights to the research question regarding changing beliefs and the impact of synchronous networking in affecting such change. This qualitative data was supported by quantitative data in the form of weekly surveys that situated synchronous and asynchronous task activities and cognitive outcomes (Knipe & Lee, 2002). In summary, the research highlighted a development of academic competencies (Morrison & Collins, 1996) considered appropriate for informed ICT integration; namely, generic, epistemic and declarative competencies. In addition, after taking into consideration the competencies developed during this Case Study, a framework consisting of four key elements, namely, the communication, the task, the learning and the technology, was drawn. It is thus anticipated that the competencies and the framework contribute new knowledge to the literature on technology in education on how best facilitate the 'informed' integration of ICT (Towndrow & Vallance, 2004) by teachers to support 'good' learning (Goodyear, 2001)

Assignment integration in order to achieve the successful studio-based education (An Idea Implementation of Integrated Architecture Experiential Learning)

The formal architecture undergraduate degree (S1) is determined by taking total 144 credits, in 8 semesters (4 years). After he/she graduated and earn the B.Arch, to become a professional architect one must take 1-2 year’s professional diploma including internship in one architectural bureau. All this limitations may cause several strategies such as a curriculum adjustment in order to meet all the teaching materials needed. Those strategies includes; eliminating some subjects that considered not necessary, decreasing the teaching materials content in order to create lesser credits so more subjects may be added into the curriculum, or merging some subjects into a new subject and adding more credits into it. This condition affecting the learning objective of the new subject cannot be achieved optimally. Seeing this tendency, an idea has emerged by integrating some of the subjects’ assignments into one comprehensive assignment. This concept is derived into scenarios that a student will undergo a one big assignment containing materials from several subjects, and the scoring phase will be examined from several subjects’ point of views. This paper will discuss the effectiveness of architecture subject assignment integration, in this case the architecture design studio as the core of architecture education with other supporting subjects including the theoretical subjects, to achieve architecture education’s target and objective. Methodology of research used is qualitative research through observation methods: (1) Condition of the studio assignments with other supporting subjects (theory and skill) assignments that can be integrated, (2) Strategy to achieve the learning objective target through the integration of the studio assignments with other subjects' assignments, (3), Advantage and disadvantage of the assignments’ integration scenario. Hopefully the result of the integration of the studio assignments with other subject's assignments can achieve the successful architecture education, effective, target fulfilled, and optimize

Experience and experiments in integrating ecology and environmental policy in an undergraduate curriculum

In 1986 the School of Natural Resources (SNR) embarked on a project to define and implement an undergraduate core curriculum that integrates natural and social science in the context of natural resource education. Currently this curriculum includes seven courses (21 credits) taken over five semesters beginning in the student\u27s first semester and ending in their last year. At the outset, the students take two separate introductory courses, one introducing them to concepts in natural science and the other introducing them to natural resources from a social and cultural perspective. This paper describes the next phase of their curricular experience, a set of three courses taken concurrently. The overall goals of the courses are to introduce and integrate theories and approaches to analysis in ecology and social science as applied to environmental issues. This paper describes our use of the concept of integration in the context of natural resource education and three models for incorporating it into this portion of the SNR Core Curriculum. Our working definition of integration involves three levels: (1) process-logistics integration, and (3) framework integration. The first is related to the process of establishing and delivering the courses including management of instructor, student, and teaching assistant roles across the disciplines. The second is related to bringing together ecological and social science knowledge to provide different views of a single natural resource case or issue. The third is related to recognizing and using conceptual frameworks shared across ecological and social science

The Long and Winding Road to Achievement: Peer Mentoring as a tool for Transition into Higher Education and its impact on Retention and Social and Academic Integration.

This study explores first year undergraduate degree students and undergraduate degree course leader’s opinions, feelings and thoughts about the peer mentoring programme run on a collection of degrees known as the undergraduate framework (UF). The findings are extracted from a number of semi-structured interviews with course leaders and 48 questionnaires from the first year students. The methodology used was an interpretivist inductive qualitative case study, which allowed for the participant’s opinions, feelings and thoughts to be acknowledged. The study aims to identify how the peer mentoring programme can aid the transition into higher education, integration into higher education and retention at the university. Throughout the thesis it identifies the gap in research on peer mentoring and the lack of a universal definition of mentoring and peer mentoring. Furthermore, it discusses the complexity of the term integration, the transition into higher education becomes more apparent through the research data and whether the peer mentoring programme aids the immense and complex gap of transitioning.The study analyses the participants interesting responses about the peer mentoring programme and identifies where the programme may benefit from development.In particular, the key findings focus upon the three main concepts of the study; transition, retention and integration. The study’s findings identify barriers to retaining students and social and academic integration as well as exploring if one type of integration takes priority over the other. The findings also highlight what the participants know about the aims of the programme, how mentors and mentees are matched, how mentees communicate with their mentors and how the university gathers feedback about the programme. It is argued that the responses from participants establish the value that mentees and course leaders attach to different types of integration. Finally, it identifies the potential improvements that,if made, might benefit the peer mentoring programme that is the focus of this study