The presenters wanted to explore with participants how to utilize the Web as a teaching tool in the ways that most effectively exploit its power. While medical education involves both content knowledge and teaching skills, making such instruction effective on the web adds new layers of complexity. Often faculty who are developing instruction for the web want to direct their attention to the technology involved, rather than the educational merits of what they are anticipating and the most effective alternatives. Developing content for the web can be time-consuming and expensive, so it makes sense to initially spend time planning and anticipating effectiveness. It is not surprising that a number of participants came to the session expecting to learn about the best kind of software tools to use in developing websites, the expenses involved, connection speeds, and other technical aspects of web development, because it is much easier to focus on such tangible items than think about teaching strategies. In the brief time we had together, the presenters felt that providing a safe environment where participants could collaborate with their colleagues in small-group brainstorming sessions, think about how to best ways to teach the complexity of medicine, and use their creativity to solve problems would give them models for how they could proceed once they returned to their institutions. Participants found the brainstorming activity to be a very positive experience, in spite of some initial caution about the process. The focus of the main activity (small group brainstorming) was for the four groups to conceptually develop a web-based solution to the same problem. The educational challenge was to develop an instructional module that would help beginning medical students understand the complexity of mitochondrial DNA. Each of the four groups developed different solutions, all of which involved the application of creativity and a process that involved contributions from a variety of different faculty. Based on end-of-session evaluations and informal observations during the workshop, most participants found the brainstorming sessions to be very useful. The opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from other institutions who share similar challenges was worthwhile to a number of people. Hearing the feedback summaries during the wrap-up was useful to many. The web-based outcomes developed conceptually during the brainstorming sessions were fairly elaborate and elegant solutions. It was an excellent beginning to this often-overlooked part of planning for a website – how to best exploit the Web’s capabilities for teaching, not just to incorporate “bells and whistles.” Remembering that “it is easy to make simple ideas complex, and difficult to make complex ideas simple,” the presenters hope to have the opportunity to assist others with how the Web can make this task easier. There were complaints from a few people, wanting more information on the technical issues of developing websites, and many wished we’d had a live connection to provide more illustrations. **** **** ****
|
||||||||||||||