Exploring Medical Students' Learning Around Uncertainty Management Using a Digital Educational Escape Room: A Design-based Research Approach

INTRODUCTION: Medical professionals meet many transitions during their careers, and must learn to adjust rapidly to unfamiliar workplaces and teams. This study investigated the use of a digital educational escape room (DEER) in facilitating medical students' learning around managing uncertainty in transitioning from classroom to clinical placement. METHODS: We used design-based research to explore the design, build, and test of a DEER, as well as gain insight into how these novel learning environments work, using Community of Inquiry (CoI) as a guiding conceptual framework. This study represented a mixed methods pilot test of a prototype DEER. Twenty-two medical students agreed to participate, and data were collected through qualitative (i.e., focus groups, game-play observations) and quantitative (i.e., questionnaires) methods. RESULTS: Eighty-two per cent of participants agreed or strongly agreed that the DEER supported their learning around uncertainty. Participants offered diverse examples of how the game had facilitated new insights on, and approaches to, uncertainty. With respect to the learning environment, multiple indicators and examples of the three domains of CoI - cognitive, teaching and social presence - were observed. DISCUSSION: Our findings suggested that DEERs offer a valuable online learning environment for students to engage with complex and emotion-provoking challenges, such as those experienced at transitions. The study also suggested that CoI can be applied to the design, implementation, and evaluation of DEER learning environments, and we have proposed a set of design principles that may offer guidance here

Suitability of faeces and tissue samples as a basis for non-invasive sampling for African swine fever in wild boar

A challenging aspect of ASFV control in wild boar populations is the design and implementation of effective surveillance and monitoring programmes, both for early warning, and to determine the ongoing epidemiological situation in an infected population. Testing blood samples requires invasive sampling strategies like hunting or capture of wild boar. Besides being biased towards healthy animals, such strategies are also linked to further spread of the virus. Non-invasive sampling strategies would increase the reliability of surveillance of ASFV in wild boar populations, without the negative side effects. This study evaluates the potential of faeces and tissue samples as a basis for non-invasive sampling strategies for ASFV in wild boar. In the acute phase (0-21 days after infection), in comparison with virus detection in blood, virus can be detected in faeces 50-80% of the time. This percentage decreases to below 10% for the subacute/chronic phase. ASFV DNA is quite stable in faeces. Half-lives range from more than 2 years at temperature up to 12°C, to roughly 15 days at temperatures of 30°C. In tissue samples, stored at 20°C, half-lives mostly range from 1.7 to 7.4 days. The sample of preference is the spleen, where the highest titres and highest half-life of ASFV DNA are observed. The level and duration of excretion of ASFV in the faeces, combined with the stability of the DNA, suggest that sampling of faeces could be the basis for a non-invasive sampling strategy to monitor ASFV in wild boar