Evaluation of three educational use cases for using Virtual Patients in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): a Delphi study
-
Natalia Stathakarou
,
Nabil Zary
Abstract
Background: Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) extended with Virtual Patients (VPs) may foster specific medical skills. In particular, three educational use cases have been proposed to enable interactivity and foster clinical reasoning skills training: collective evaluation of decision making in the context of uncertainty, collective repurposing of cases with division of discussion into subgroups, and computational models in short cases for flexible selection and adaptive learning with VPs. The aim of this study was to evaluate the educational strengths and weaknesses of the proposed use cases.
Methods: We went through a two-round modified Delphi process. A panel of experts was formed and asked with open-ended questions to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each use case. The obtained responses were categorized thematically; four specific aspects of the use cases were isolated. In the second phase, the panel was asked to read the collected, categorized responses and prioritize the use cases focusing on each of the four identified aspects.
Results: Six experts participated in the process. According to their opinion, decision making in uncertain context was the most feasible in implementation and in fostering clinical reasoning skills training; cultural repurposing was judged to leverage the MOOC potential the most; and computational models in short cases were considered the most interesting use case for the learners.
Conclusions: The use cases were validated and prioritized; the Delphi approach brought insights into the use cases’ potential benefits, threats, and challenges.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge their gratitude to the experts participating in this study for their substantial contributions. In addition, we would like to thank the KiX MOOC team and the Open Labyrinth community for many inspiring discussions.
Author contributions: All the authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this submitted manuscript and approved submission.
Research funding: None declared.
Employment or leadership: None declared.
Honorarium: None declared.
Competing interests: The funding organization(s) played no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the report for publication.
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Supplemental Material
The online version of this article (DOI: 10.1515/bams-2015-0007) offers supplementary material, available to authorized users.
©2015 by De Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Breaking down barriers to medical e-learning
- Reviews
- Authoring, deploying, and managing dynamic Virtual Patients in Virtual Clinical Environments
- Building an audio/video-feedback system for simulation training in medical education
- Research Articles
- Development and evaluation of a virtual patient-based exam in occupational medicine
- E-learning innovations for the education of general practitioners at the Bavarian Virtual University (BVU) – a model for other countries
- Evaluation of three educational use cases for using Virtual Patients in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs): a Delphi study
- Creation of an iBook aimed at medical students – a student’s perspective
- Congress Abstracts
- International Conference Cybernetic Modelling of Biological Systems MCSB 2015
