Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines: May 2011

Wednesday, 18 May 2011

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@NatureChemistry: RT @ChemConnector: Why have chemistry software on mobile devices?: http://t.co/E0HYmiL

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Tuesday, 17 May 2011

News: 'Loving and Hating Mathematics' - Inside Higher Ed

Monday, 16 May 2011

Get the word out: Effective communication of physics education research

Sent to you by David Andrew via Google Reader:

Get the word out: Effective communication of physics education research

via sciencegeekgirl.com by sciencegeekgirl on 16/05/11

I recently gave a plenary talk at the Foundation and Frontiers of Physics Education Research – Puget Sound conference. What an honor! And very fun, because I got to talk about anything that I wanted to. I've been wanting — for ages — to talk about the intersections that I see between science journalism and our struggle, in education research, to get instructors to use our research-based techniques. Before coming into physics education research (PER), I was a science journalist and communicator — I've got a wide variety of publication in the popular press, and had a wonderful summer at NPR's science desk. So, at FFPERPS, I decided to finally give the talk that's been four years in coming: Getting the word out, Effective Communication of Our Work in PER.

(I would love to give this talk again, so if anybody has an audience of faculty professional development people, please let me know, as I want to get this message across!)

The talk was incredibly well-received, generating a lot of interest and discussion and debate. So, while it's hard to give as good of a performance to my computer, I wanted to document the presentation here on the blog. It's 50 minutes long, so a bit of a time investment, but if you're thinking about communicating about education research, I suggest you give it a viewing. I've got some good research studies in there, connections to the communication of climate change and anti-smoking campaigns, and great clips from NPR.

Here is the presentation in its entirety (video with my audio)

But the resolution isn't that great, so I recommend you actually just download it from my website: Here it is (100 MB).

Getting the Word Out: Effective Communication of the Results of our Physics Education Research studies

View more videos from Stephanie Chasteen.

Here are the slides-only via Slideshare:

Getting the Word Out: Effective Communication of the Results of our Physics Education Research studies

And here is the closing slide with my main points:

Thoughts?

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"I'm sorry to have to tell you this...."

Sent to you by David Andrew via Google Reader:

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this...."

via Wishful thinking in medical education by noreply@blogger.com (Anne Marie) on 15/05/11

Empathy by The Shopping Sherpa

Another Sunday morning, another stimulating conversation about medical education on Twitter.

It started with a tweet from Dr. Jonathon Tomlinson "To say you cannot learn insight and empathy is like saying you cannot learn science or a new language. Possibly true, but very sad."

So can we teach empathy? What do we mean by empathy? A good review of the complexities was published earlier this year by some researchers from the University of East Anglia. They suggest that we might be better to step away from the concept of empathy and instead just focus on etiquette. It's a provocative read.

I wonder if teaching empathy isn't like teaching clinical reasoning. We need to first think of empathy as a disposition before concentrating on the skills. The following quote comes from a just-published study on how physicians think about clinical reasoning in students, is it an ability or a disposition? : "The ability-disposition distinction highlights the difference between teaching knowledge and skills, referred to as teaching-as-transmission, versus teaching attitudes, modifying personality and changing behaviour, referred to as teaching-as-enculturation."

So how can we transmit what we think is important to others about empathy? A few years ago, I blogged about a communication skills session that I was teaching. I was aware of how this session on "breaking bad news" had to some become formulaic. But an interesting discussion did occur and we all questioned our thoughts and approaches to the topic.

Just as Krupat et. al suggest that in order to develop clinical reasoning we need to focus on "encouraging self-awareness and mindfulness, modelling open discussion and inquiry, accepting doubt and uncertainty", I'd suggest that the same is true of developing empathy.

What we do not want is for students to leave thinking that empathy is just a set of behaviours. As this doctor tweeted: ""Empathy by rote" is a ridiculous concept. It's like teaching somebody to be "happy". Faked empathy is insulting."

Another doctor replied that to his mind one of the worst examples of this was: " to score on 'empathy' student said 'sorry it has to be me to tell you this'". The doctor was shocked as he saw this as the student putting "professional discomfort before patient distress". It's this kind of situation that we exactly need to tease out when talking to students about empathy and communication.

In a comment on a blog post by a doctor about breaking bad news, a patient writes of her feeling when she was told she had a serious condition. She explains how the doctor "As he spoke, he began to sip little bits of air in between his lips. This suggested to me he was feeling emotions as well. It made him more human and incredibly compassionate. I loved him for that."

For some patients showing that we are human and have emotions to will be right. For others it might be seen selfish. They might want us to have 'professional distance', to just get on with the job. How with someone that we don't know well can we figure out how to be? Do we have to accept that sometimes we will just get it wrong and that etiquette is the best we can aim for?

I don't expect to reach the answers to those questions through this blog. But they are the kind of issues we should discuss with students when we are in real-life situations, so that we can help them to start developing their sensitivity to communication and their inclination to becoming good communicators.

More tweets can be seen in the storify here.
Regina Holliday tells the powerful story of a doctor who seems to lack all empathy here.
Excellent post on empathy by oncologist, Robert Miller, here.
Previous posts on medical students' thoughts about teaching and learning about empathy:
A medical student's thoughts on empathy and #meded
A twitter conversation with UK medical students about empathy

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Monday, 9 May 2011

Wiki in Resident Education

Sent to you by David Andrew via Google Reader:

Wiki in Resident Education

via Dr Shock MD PhD by Dr Shock on 08/05/11

Recently updated the external web page for our residency training for psychiatry. It's in Dutch and still rather dull. There's also a website for residents of psychiatry on the intra net. It's even duller. Mostly outdated documents. Wouldn't a Wiki be an alternative instead for a static web page?

Advantages of a Wiki

It can combine several heterogeneous systems such as documents, files, videos etc. etc.
Editing can be delegated to the participants in this case residents in training
Information can be updated easily by the different participants instead of one editor

A disadvantage could be improper editing or using the wiki for purposes not intended.

What could possibly be published on a Wiki for residency training in Psychiatry?

We've already started using a wiki for our Critically Appraised Topics, one of the pilars of Evidence Based Medicine. Works just great.
Other educational content
Schedules such as intake, duty schedules
Phone numbers of other clinics, personel, supervisors etc. etc.
Dictation templates
Rotation/Call information

Using a wiki for resident education has been tried and researched. The authors from a recent publication on the results of using a wiki in education for radiology residents needed a wiki with the following features

ability to leverage existing authentication mechanisms, support diverse content including file attachments and images, provide easy organization, be readily searchable, allow quick tracking of recent changes, provide a flexible structure for granting editing permission, and require minimal administrative oversight

They found it as Dokuwiki. It was easily implemented. They also designed a survey to assess the effect of the wiki on the residency program. Fifty-one out of 60 residents responded to the survey (85%).

On average, residents thought the wiki was very useful (4.7± 0.5; Likert scale, 5 being very useful).

Residents used the wiki for looking up phone numbers, dictation templates, rotation information, educational content, schedules and others. These answers on the survey could be compared to log files on the server. The success was mostly explained by listening to the residents.

During the early days of our wiki, there was a push from the chief residents to include what was expected to be high-yield content including rotation and call schedules, phone number listings, and general on-call help.

Chief residents were the most important in maintaining the wiki. In 3 years there was no malicious editing on the wiki.

Finally, the human and hardware costs associated with implementing the wiki have been low, including 18 h of server setup and use of inexpensive server hardware.

So money can't be an argument against implementing such a wiki.

Kohli, M., & Bradshaw, J. (2010). What is a Wiki, and How Can it be Used in Resident Education? Journal of Digital Imaging, 24 (1), 170-175 DOI: 10.1007/s10278-010-9292-7

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Friday, 6 May 2011

Prodotto eccezionale vicino a Monaco

Appartamenti & Villas vendita di maggio 2011
Siamo lieti di offrirvi i nostri ultimi prodotti disponibili per la vendita vicino a MONACO Contattateci per maggiori informazioni o per tutte le visite.

	Roquebrune Cap Martin - Vicino al mare 2 vani 55 m² Roquebrune cap martin, quartiere Hameau, zona residenziale, magnifico appartamento a l'ultimo piano, grande terrazza vista mare panoramica, parking e cantina Prezzo: 390 000 € Per ulteriori informazioni, clicca qui .

	Mentone centro via pedonale 3 vani 64 m² MENTON strada pedonale, 3 vani di 64 m², nel centro di Mentone, vicino alle spiagge e negozi. L'appartamento ha una cucina aperta sul soggiorno con balcone , 2 camere, una con armadietto, bagno - doccia e toilette separata. Vista sulla chiesa San Michele Prezzo: 297 000 € Per ulteriori informazioni, clicca qui .

	Roquebrune Cap Martin - vicino spiaggia 3 vani 90m² Posizione eccezionale per questa bella villa indipendente situata in una zona residenziale di Roquebrune Cap Martin. Costruito su 2 piani, vanta una magnifica vista sul mare apertura su uno splendido panorama. Cucina dà accesso ad una bella terrazza. garage e cantina. Piscina privata Prezzo: 780 000 € Per ulteriori informazioni, clicca qui .

	Roquebrune Cap Martin - vicino spiaggia 3 vani 100m² Roquebrune, in un affascinante palazzo storico, grazioso appartamento di tre camere da letto su due piani, vista mare, servizi simpatico, patio, parco alberato, piscina e garage Prezzo: contattaci Per ulteriori informazioni, clicca qui .

	Roquebrune Cap Martin - Spiaggia 3 vani 70m² Roquebrune cap martin prodotto eccezionale direttamente sulla spiaggia del cabbe. Tipica casa su due piani, grande terrazza sul tetto. Acceso privato al mare. Piccolo acceso pedestre di 30 metri. Prodotto raro Prezzo: 690 000 € Per ulteriori informazioni, clicca qui .

	Roquebrune cap Martin - Frontiera Monte-carlo, 3 vani 80 m² Roquebrune cap martin frontiera di monaco in residence di standing mai abitato eccezionale tre vani belle finizione due bagni terrazza parcheggio cantina. Vista mare Prezzo: contattaci Per ulteriori informazioni, clicca qui .