What is the Mazur Peer Instruction course?

 

 

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What is the Mazur Peer Instruction course?

via Colligo: Reflections of a Learning Technologist by Nitin Parmar on 2/22/10

[This blog post first appeared on the Audience Response System pilot project website.]

Background
Eric Mazur, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, developed some years ago what is now commonly known as Mazur's Peer Instruction course, through administering ConcepTests.

Mazur's Peer Instruction course, whilst not necessarily revolving around a method of teaching which involves the use of an ARS, is grounded in the psychology of how peers aid learning. The process "involves students in their own learning during lecture and focuses their attention on underlying concepts" [further information].

Mazur's approach, grounded in his teaching of Mechanics, addressed a long researched principle weakness of his particular subject matter. By following a straightforward path, whereby students were encouraged to work individually and with peers to find a particular answer, students were assessed twice and given feedback n times in a given sequence.

Nicol and Boyle (2003) have written on the nature of Mazur's peer instruction course versus discussion based activities in large classrooms. The concluded the the type of dialogue and discussion sequence that takes is vital in relation to the effect on students' learning. Crouch and Mazur (2001) showed that after peer discussion, the number of students giving correct answers to a concept re-test (prior to any teacher feedback) was higher than first time around. They go on to say that peer discussion is critical to the success of peer instruction.

How might peer instruction influence the design of (my) ARS activities?
A number of initiatives involving both the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Office and the Students' Union have focused on improving the amount of feedback that students receive during units of study. This might be audio and/or written feedback on coursework, or feedback to students' within a face-to-face context. A range of tools available at the university to enable lecturers to support and enhance the learner experience using classroom feedback technologies, such as the ARS.

Mazur's peer instruction sequence not only supports the process of giving feedback to students, but also encourages interaction between students within the lecture context, and reflection on the answers to given to multiple choice questions. In turn, this promotes the processes of active learning and engagement by students, and of making lectures more interactive.

An adaptation of Mazur's peer instruction course has already been used by Prof. James Davenport from the Department of Computer Science, who has used the ConcepTests principle to assess students' understanding of key Networking related concepts. Students were asked multiple-choice questions individually, and then following peer discussion, answer the question again as a group.

Individual responses

Group responses

As demonstrated by the two TurningPoint-based PowerPoint slides above, responses before and after peer discussion is different. The correct answer (D) appears with most votes on both occasions, but what the process allows the lecture to do is (1) identify through the first slide that more students (58%) chose the incorrect answer than the correct one, and (2) following group discussion, where presumably students' may have had to convince each other of the correct answer, some misconceptions were addressed. Following the second round of votes, the lecturer gave feedback and explained why D was the correct answer and addressed any further misconceptions. Further (verbal) questions were taken from students were taken at this point too.

Where can I find out more?
There a number of sessions during Innovations in Learning and Teaching Week 2010 this week, which involve the Audience Response System (ARS). For example, one of last years' successful Dragons Den projects, led by Alan Hayes from the Department of Computer Science, explored and evaluated the use of ARS in learning and teaching and will be discussed at the launch event today.

e-Learning Taster Session 2 on Thursday 25 February 2010 will focus on introducing ARS , gaining experience of using the technologies and thinking about how you might use them in your teaching. A further discussion of this blog post will take place then, and the presenters will be on hand to answer any questions about the the TurningPoint software and hardware, as well as the pedagogical influences on the design on ARS questions. To book a place on the session, please send an email to acdev@bath.ac.uk

References
Crouch, C.H. and Mazur, E. (2001), "Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results", American Journal of Physics, vol.69, no. 9, pp.970-977 [pdf copy] [Empirical evidence of improved exam pass rates.]

Nicol, D.J. and Boyle, J.T (2003) Peer Instruction versus Class-wide Discussion in Large Classes: acomparison of two interaction methods in the wired classroom, Studies in Higher Education Volume 28, No. 4, October 2003 [pdf copy].

http://blogs.bath.ac.uk/ars/2010/02/22/what-is-the-mazur-peer-instruction-course/

Filed under: Ideas, Workshops Tagged: dragons-den, IW2010, mazur, mazurs-peer-instruction-course

 

 

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Dentistry in Social Media

 

 

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Dentistry in Social Media

via ScienceRoll by Bertalan Meskó on 2/21/10

Have you ever tried to find a quality dentistry blog, mobile application or an active community site? Believe me, it takes plenty of time and effort as the number of dentistry-related websites is exponentially growing. But on Webicina.com, you will find only selected content focusing on dentistry. Check out Dentistry in Social Media for more.

• News and Information on Dentistry
• Dentistry in the Blogosphere
• Dentistry Podcasts and Intrerviews
• Dentistry Community Sites, FaceBook Groups and Forums
• Microblogging: Twitter and Friendfeed
• Dentistry Wikis
• Dentistry videos, animations and videocasts
• Mobile Applications
• Social Bookmarking
• Medical Search Engines
• Trend Trackers
• Clinical Cases and Images in Dentistry
• Slideshows about Dentistry

We also help you follow dentistry news, journals, blogs and Twitter users on PeRSSonalized Dentistry which is an easy-to-use, free aggregator of quality medical information that lets you select your favourite resources and read the latest news and articles in one personalized place.

 

 

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A Large Collection of Cell Biology Videos

 

 

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A Large Collection of Cell Biology Videos

via Free Technology for Teachers by noreply@blogger.com (Mr. Byrne) on 2/19/10

The Biology Department at Davidson College has put together a large collection of videos and animations of cell biology processes. Most of the videos are in QuickTime format while most of the animations are GIF animations. The collection is divided into five categories; Movies of Cells, Movies of Cellular Calcium, Movies of Molecular Methods, Molecular Movies, and a miscellaneous category.

On YouTube, Garland Science has a couple of lengthy playlists containing videos about cell biology and molecular biology. Below I've embedded one of the videos from those playlists.

 

 

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How to write a literature review using only the web

 

 

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How to write a literature review using only the web

via Arin's Blog by arin.basu@gmail.com (Arin Basu) on 2/9/10

This morning we were discussing cloud computing and the next big thing where everything gets done in the so called cloud. In the "cloud", data are hosted in servers elsewhere, available all the time for downloading to machines or downloading may not be necessary as all software and software implementations to handle data will be readily available and one can work as often as one wishes, wherever, whenver, whatever. That discussion brought into mind if we can conduct a systematic review of literature entirely on the web using say only Google Docs, some online reference management website, and pretty much that.

Why is that a desirable thing to do?
For one, if a framework of conducting simple evidence based reviews can be developed that can be done entirely off the cloud or let's say off the web, that frees up resources that are entirely local on someone's computer. Besides, developing systematic reviews is entirely a team work, so more distributed work essentially means faster turnover. That said, I wanted to give it a shot.

The plan is this.

In one hour, I am going to run a simple review by framing a research question, running a search, gathering essential studies, summarizing the key points and writing up the review with nothing other than an online word processor such as Google Docs.

The question:
Is there any association between low birth weight (birth weight less than 2500 grams) and adult heart attacks (acute myocardial infarction)?

OK, it's a random question, but at least a question that has two simplicities:
a) A fairly well defined "exposure" variable if you will
b) And a fairly straightforward health outcomes that we are going to consider

The challenge is to answer this question with a write up or review within a limited time. The tools that we are going to use:
1) Google Docs (Google document or word processor; indeed any other online word processor would do)
2) Google Spreadsheets (or any other online spreadsheet application)
3) Mendeley reference manager (reference management could also have been conducted by Zotero, and more about that later)
4) Pubmed Central (because pubmed central allows free access to full text articles. If there are other implementations, they can be used as well). We add to that Google Scholar

Other than these four fully integrated online services nothing else will be used to develop an answer to the above question.

To test the feasibility, we start the review process thus:

Research question:
Is there a valid association between low birth weight and acute myocardial infarction in adults?

Search terms:
"low birth weight"
"pre terms"
"lbw"
"premature infant"
"AMI"
"acute myocardial infarction"
"heart attack"
"myocardial infarct"
Restrict the search terms to:
English language
all articles that got published within the last five years
all totally freely available articles
We are also not going to include studies that are case studies or case series
We are going to present the results in the following hierarchy:
Systematic review
Randomized trial if any
Cohort studies
Case control studies
Cross sectional survey
Case series

We are not going to conduct a formal meta analysis but just narrative analysis

Let's get going. The plan will be something like this.

1) Set up a document in Google Docs (* more comments about this later)
2) Set up a spreadsheet
3) Set up a data abstraction form in Google Spreadsheets
4) Create a collection in Citeulike
5) Create a collection in Mendeley
6) Run a search in Scholar Google, and pubmed
7) Export the results to Mendeley
8) Get the PDFs after discarding the excludable articles
9) Summarize and annotate the PDFs
10) Write the results

Ten tasks, let's say two hours. Can this be done? Can this task be distributed among a number of participants?

If this is a model and if this works, then this process can be used to speed up the process of evidence generation remarkably fast and perhaps develop a plan for analysis of high throughput literature database.

 

 

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Death by PowerPoint – Fact or Fiction?

http://mededelearning.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/death-by-powerpoint-fact-or-fiction/

David Andrew

02081446753 

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Contact me: davidanr@gmail.com david.andrew52 davidandr@googlewave.com

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Buzz from AJ Cann

 Link to this post:
 http://www.google.com/buzz/107962914038670635598/8G9Z73idCir/The-short-view-In-a-well-argued-and-thought

18:58 AJ Cann: The short view
In a well argued and thought-provoking piece a few days ago (Science and Web 2.0: Talking About Science vs. Doing Science), David Crotty argues that:
"Tools for communication are the low-hanging fruit, the obvious things to build based on Web 2.0 ventures that have worked in other areas, but so far they've failed to capture the interest of most scientists."
This is undeniably true, but it leads David to the conclusion that:
Every second spent blogging, chatting on FriendFeed, or leaving comments on a PLoS paper is a second taken away from other activities. Those other activities have direct rewards towards advancement.
and:
Finding ways to help scientists spend more time at the bench and to get more out of that time will succeed where the current crop of peripheral distracting tools have failed.
While presently true, this is the short view, which fails to recognize the change that these tools are bringing, in science as in society. Scientists may not like them, but they're not going away. Just as in the last week Friendfeed has enabled us to set up a research collaboration with someone in Australia we have never met face to face, these tools will bring great changes to education. If people think the professional qualities we are instilling via Friendfolios are not significant, then they have truly missed the point of social tools

Fwd: Thinking Writing Events

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sally Mitchell <s.mitchell@qmul.ac.uk>
Date: 9 February 2010 13:34
Subject: Thinking Writing Events
To: Sally Mitchell <s.mitchell@qmul.ac.uk>

Dear Colleague

In the week beginning 8th March, we are hosting visitors from Quinnipiac University, Connecticut as part of an exchange fellowship, designed to enable the two institutions to compare institutional, departmental and individual approaches to developing writing and thinking in the disciplines.  During this visit there'll be two Thinking Writing events and I 'd like to invite you to participate in these:

1) EXCHANGE OF PRACTICE FORUM   -  "Developing disciplinary thinking in the first year – uses of writing"

 Tuesday 9th March 2-3.30 in G.O.Jones Building, Room 6.02

We'd like to hear about how you have used, or are planning to use, writing to encourage your students to engage with ways of thinking in your discipline or field. We're placing the emphasis on the First Year in recognition of the significance in students' learning development of transition from A level (or equivalent) to higher education. However we are also interested to discuss approaches or activities used at other levels that could be adapted or adopted in the First Year. We hope that colleagues will come forward with their ideas and experiences and be prepared to share them in this informal forum.

Please get in touch if:

•  You have something you would like to talk briefly about. It can be a small, simple activity, or a more elaborate one; it can also be something that doesn't quite work that might benefit from discussion.... (If you can't make the date but nonetheless have something others might benefit from hearing about, please still get in touch -  we'll disseminate for you)

•  You would like to come along and hear what others do.

2) WORKSHOP -  "Critical Thinking: What is it and can it be taught?"

Wednesday 10^th March  2-4pm in Laws Building, Room G5

Led by Professor Bob Smart, Faculty of English and Co-chair of Writing Across the Curriculum,  and Andy Delohery, Director of the Learning Centre, Quinnipiac University.

Please let me know (by 26th February if possible) if you would like to take part in either or both of these events. All welcome, so do circulate this invitation to other colleagues, including teaching assistants.

Best wishes
Sally

--  Sally Mitchell Thinking Writing  Language and Learning Unit Queen Mary, University of London Mile End Road London E1 4NS  Tel: 020 7882 2833 www.thinkingwriting.qmul.ac.uk  

The Hidden and Informal Curriculum During Medical Education

 

 

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The Hidden and Informal Curriculum During Medical Education

via Dr Shock MD PhD by Dr Shock on 07/02/10

Both the hidden and informal curriculum take place after or next to the theoretical teaching, the formal teaching and has an important part in the shaping of the medical students' professionalism and professional values. Moreover, these forms of the curriculum have a major impact on the learning potential of med students. Yet little is known about this subject. A lot has been written but only from a theoretical stand point.

The hidden curriculum is the physical and workforce organizational infrastructure in the academic health center that influences the learning
process and the socialization to professional norms and rituals.

The informal curriculum is the student's immersion in the interpersonal processes in the academic health center, including
interactions between students and their teachers, interactions among the interprofessional participants in medical care processes, and interactions that students experience with patients and their family members.

Recent published research studied the informal and hidden curriculum by using medical students' critical incident narratives. Medical students were asked during their third year clerkship in internal medicine to report professional critical incidents, events that thought them something about professionalism and professional values or the lack thereof.

reflect on and write about events, either positive or negative, that "taught you something about professionalism and professional values."

Each students had to write at least two such narratives online in a web based password protected web site. These narratives were printed and discussed anonymous in focus groups, monthly small group reflection sessions. From the 272 experiences described by the students, 63,4% were positive and 29,1% negative. The other stories were not positive nor negative. The main domain about which these narratives were focused were about medical clinical interaction (81,3%) and 18,6% about educational situations.

Most common themes:

• manifesting respect or disrespect in clinical interactions with patients, families, colleagues, and coworkers. For instance face to face contact with patients or conversations about colleagues in their absence
• managing communication challenges with patients and families. Mostly positive stories about the positive amnner in which professionals handled these contacts. Some stories were clumsy in handling sensitive conversations about important topics
• demonstrating responsibility, pride, knowledge, and thoroughness. Role models showing actions that either were poor or exemplary behaviors.
• stories about professionals taking time to understand their patients' concerns and needs and making certain that patients understood what was being said about their illnesses
• going above and beyond, caring and altruism in taking care of patients and/or family members
• stories concerning communicating and working in teams and about the issue of teamwork
• creating an (un)welcoming environment. This is mostly about teaching and the learning environment. The feeling to be actively taught and cared for is extremely important for students
• The teacher asking questions and providing explanations, using all opportunities to teach values and manners, also an important educational theme for the students.

These themes show how utterly important it is to be a good professional role model to medical students. They focus mainly on interaction and communication. They mostly have their attention on the respectful or lack thereof interactions in teams and towards patients and many others. Obviously med students are very sensitive to these communications and dependent on role models for their future. They observe very closely how their mentors interact with various others, both visible and behind closed doors.

I don't think negative interactions or incidents will have a negative effect, these things happen. What counts is the way we solve these negative behaviors, how we deal with them. If we succeed to deal with them in a positive manner, these incidents become educational. What do you think?

Karnieli-Miller O, Vu TR, Holtman MC, Clyman SG, & Inui TS (2010). Medical students' professionalism narratives: a window on the informal and hidden curriculum. Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 85 (1), 124-33 PMID: 20042838

Related posts:

1. Blog writing for professionalism in medical education Had an idea to use writing of a blog...
2. Empathy for the Mentally Ill in Medical Education Empathy is an important asset for a doctor. This...
3. Empathy during Medical Education There is a significant decline in empathy occurs during...

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Beyond Bullet Points: Interview with Nancy Duarte

 

 

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Beyond Bullet Points: Interview with Nancy Duarte

via Duarte Blog by Paula Tesch on 05/02/10

If you're interested in presentation design, you've heard of Cliff Atkinson. His best-selling book, Beyond Bullet Points, has inspired many people to break away from the traditionally bullet-heavy presentation format.

His book has also inspired a blog, to which Meryl Evans is a frequent contributor. Meryl recently interviewed Nancy Duarte on behalf of the Beyond Bullet Points blog. (Say that ten times fast.)

Nancy and Meryl chatted about what makes a presentation effective and memorable (a story), what makes a story good (it moves your audience), and why sketching and drawing at any skill level can make you a better presenter (it gets you thinking outside the box.) Nancy also shares a few of her favorite presentations, all of which can be viewed online.

Check out the interview here:
http://www.beyondbulletpoints.com/blog/?p=365

 

 

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from Piaget

People 'have real understanding only of that which they invent themselves, and each time that we try to teach them too quickly, we keep them from reinventing it themselves'  (he actually said children but applies to everyone) from this website - http://www.leading-learning.co.nz/famous-quotes.html#teaching

Here's a Thought: Let's Banish Critical Thinking

 

 

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Here's a Thought: Let's Banish Critical Thinking

via The Window by Kevin D. Washburn, Ed.D. on 2/4/10

I've been thinking about thinking lately, and I've had it with critical thinking. Note the italics. I've had it with the term critical thinking, not the actual practice. From a recent immersion in thinking-related research, I've concluded that critical thinking is like the weather: everybody talks about it but few do anything about it.

No arena bandies the term about as widely as education. Few conferences fail to include at least one session devoted to the topic, and book vendors at these events hawk the latest tomes dedicated to it. Educators seem to agree on the need for students to learn to think critically, but that seems to be the end of their consensus. Ask three different educators for their definition of critical thinking and you're likely to get at least four different ideas, and at least half of them will include a nod to Bloom's Taxonomy. Somewhere in our history, many of us were convinced that if our questioning climbed a ladder and we called on students whose names we wrote on popsicle sticks and pulled randomly from a styrofoam cup, we were teaching students critical thinking.

Because of the confusion all these preconceived notions create, I propose that we stop talking about critical thinking and instead just think about thinking. To that end, I've started referencing a different model. Imagine thinking as a target. As any marksman knows, the center of the target is where you aim if you want the best result. However, though the center of this target represents the ultimate goal, the outer circles are not without value. Let's examine the first of these outer circles: memorize.

Wait, don't stop reading! I know memorizing lacks the flash and appeal of the target's other circles, but our brains do indeed memorize information, sometimes without our consent. For example, I know every lyric to the 70's classic but somewhat mind-numbing "Funkytown." I never intentionally sat down and used flash cards to learn the lyrics. They just got stuck in my head, which is one way to define memorizing. We memorize when things get stuck in our heads, on purpose or otherwise.

When educators talk about memorizing, it's usually with a scowl on their faces and the taste of battery acid on their tongues. Memorizing is so beneath us. We don't have students memorize anything. Everything we teach is meaningful. It's all the others—teachers who teach other disciplines—who make students memorize unnecessary information. We're above such an approach. We climb questioning ladders and pull popsicle sticks, for pete's sake!

But let's be honest. Despite the fact that most everything factual can now be found quickly via technology, some information still possesses its greatest value when it's memorized. At its best, memorizing enables efficiency in thinking and acting. For example, knowing how to spell the words critical and thinking saved me plenty of time in developing this post. If I didn't know instantly how to spell most of the words I use in writing, I'd probably have far less to say. (I know what you're thinking: that'd be a bad thing?) Can you imagine trying to compose any significant passage of writing if you had to stop and check your wireless device for the correct spelling of every word?

I once had an experience that provides a picture of what this might be like. My wife and I love going to the theater for live performances. One time, just before the curtain was raised on a new drama, the announcer spoke via the public address system: "Today the role of Countess Calista will be played by Jane Smith, script in hand." Apparently the lead actress and her understudy were unavailable. Sure enough, Ms. Smith waltzed onto stage with "script in hand," and read her lines throughout the performance. It was disjointed and distracting. So much so that I can't even remember the name of play, let alone what it was about. Memorizing has its place, even when technology that can provide the next line or correct spelling exists.

However, at its worse, memorization becomes merely testable material that lacks any use beyond the end of an instructional unit. With such material, its measurability is often its sole benefit, and it's a benefit for the teacher not the student. Unfortunately it seems that many schools would rather aim for this outermost circle, decreasing the likelihood of hitting any part of the thinking target. But if we aim for and even hit this outermost circle, we have problems. Memorizing, while valuable when engaged selectively, has its limits.

First, students who only memorize remain subject to dogma's sway. Parroting is evidence of memorizing, and a student who has highly developed memorizing capacity without equally developed processing abilities will tend to repeat the ideas of others, often without understanding.

Second and relatedly, students only equipped to memorize tend to accept without question. Such individuals tend to take the words that fall from the mouths of people they like and repeat them whether they are true or not. Since they lack the ability to process the ideas the words represent, accepting and repeating those words become the individual's way of "thinking."

Third, individuals who rely solely on memorizing as thinking cannot entertain or even understand conflicting ideas. That which they've memorized becomes their sole reference, so anything new must conform with the previously memorized information.

In short, merely memorizing severely limits an individual. So, while hitting the outermost circle represents one element of mental activity, always aiming there produces individuals I don't think most schools and teachers would claim as their intended outcome. We need to consider the inner circles (and we will in future posts) and actually teach students the cognitive skills associated with them. Popsicle sticks and questioning variety alone won't get us there.

Let's think about thinking—teaching it, increasing it, developing students who actually can do it—but let's leave our confusing dance with critical thinking behind.

Top Image: 'la linea della vita, nichilismo' http://www.flickr.com/photos/32347849@N08/3269623518

 

 

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