Faculty Bibliography

Interprofessional education is a critical precursor to effective teamwork and the collaboration of health care professionals in clinical settings. Numerous barriers have been identified that preclude scalable and sustainable interprofessional education (IPE) efforts. This article describes NYU3T: Teaching, Technology, Teamwork, a model that uses novel technologies such as Web-based learning, virtual patients, and high-fidelity simulation to overcome some of the common barriers and drive implementation of evidence-based teamwork curricula. It outlines the program's curricular components, implementation strategy, evaluation methods, and lessons learned from the first year of delivery and describes implications for future large-scale IPE initiatives.

NYU School of Medicine's Division of Educational Informatics in collaboration with BioDigital Systems LLC (New York, NY) has created a virtual human body dataset that is being used for visualization, education and training and is accessible over modern web browsers.

Background: The use of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) is rising across health professions education. Research to date is of limited use in guiding the implementation and selection of CAI innovations. Aims: In the context of two symposia, systemic reviews were discussed that evaluate literature in Internet-based learning, Virtual Patients, and animations. Each session included a debate with the goal of reaching consensus on best current practices and future research. Methods: Thematic analysis of the discussions was performed to arrange the questions by theme, eliminate redundancy, and craft them into a cohesive narrative. Results: The question analysis revealed that there are clear advantages to the use of CAI, and that established educational theories should certainly inform the future development and selection of CAI tools. Schools adopting CAI need to carefully consider the benefits, cost, available resources, and capacity for teachers and learners to accept change in their practice of education. Potential areas for future research should focus on the effectiveness of CAI instructional features, integration of e-learning into existing curricula and with other modalities like simulation, and the use of CAI in assessment of higher-level outcomes. Conclusions: There are numerous opportunities for future research and it will be important to achieve consensus on important themes

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Curricular reform efforts and a desire to use novel educational strategies that foster student collaboration are challenging the traditional microscope-based teaching of histology. Computer-based histology teaching tools and Virtual Microscopes (VM), computer-based digital slide viewers, have been shown to be effective and efficient educational strategies. We developed an open-source VM system based on the Google Maps engine to transform our histology education and introduce new teaching methods. This VM allows students and faculty to collaboratively create content, annotate slides with markers, and it is enhanced with social networking features to give the community of learners more control over the system. RESULTS: We currently have 1,037 slides in our VM system comprised of 39,386,941 individual JPEG files that take up 349 gigabytes of server storage space. Of those slides 682 are for general teaching and available to our students and the public; the remaining 355 slides are used for practical exams and have restricted access. The system has seen extensive use with 289,352 unique slide views to date. Students viewed an average of 56.3 slides per month during the histology course and accessed the system at all hours of the day. Of the 621 annotations added to 126 slides 26.2% were added by faculty and 73.8% by students. The use of the VM system reduced the amount of time faculty spent administering the course by 210 hours, but did not reduce the number of laboratory sessions or the number of required faculty. Laboratory sessions were reduced from three hours to two hours each due to the efficiencies in the workflow of the VM system. CONCLUSIONS: Our virtual microscope system has been an effective solution to the challenges facing traditional histopathology laboratories and the novel needs of our revised curriculum. The web-based system allowed us to empower learners to have greater control over their content, as well as the ability to work together in collaborative groups. The VM system saved faculty time and there was no significant difference in student performance on an identical practical exam before and after its adoption. We have made the source code of our VM freely available and encourage use of the publically available slides on our website

BACKGROUND: The authors developed and evaluated an interactive, Web-based module to train medical students in screening and brief intervention (SBI) for unhealthy alcohol use. METHODS: First-year students were randomized to module versus lecture. Change in knowledge, attitudes, and confidence were compared. Performance was assessed by objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) and analyzed by intention to treat and treatment received. RESULTS: Of 141 consenting students, 64% (n = 90) completed an intervention (54% lecture vs. 70% Web assigned). Knowledge, confidence, and attitudes improved in both groups, with more improvement in Advise-Assist knowledge for Web students (14% vs. -3%, p = .003). Web students outperformed their lecture peers in both general communication (65% vs. 51% items well done, p = .004) and alcohol-specific tasks (54% vs. 41%, p = .021) on OSCE. Analysis by treatment received enhanced between-group differences. CONCLUSION: Use of a Web-based module to teach SBI is associated with greater knowledge gain and skills performance compared with a lecture covering similar content. The module provides an efficient means for training in this area