pedagogy or technology: e-study guides

the third presentation in the "pedagogy or technology" set looked at the use of e-study guides at peninsula medical school. a curriculum review recommended the use of online study guides for 3 reasons:

• integration of 'science' learning with individual disciplines, pbl, and clinical skills;
• strengthening of independent learning - helping students prepare better for f2f;
• reduction of repetitive training - often, they found lecturers delivering identical sessions up to 12 times - and improvement in consistency of delivery across the medical school's many sites.

the research they did sounded promising...but the stats presented were too generalised without much unpicking of what they really meant practice. one logistical problem raised was that of the developers getting the content from academics - students said they found the early study guides with links and activities really useful, but this tailed off after the early weeks of teaching as academics became too busy to pass on activities to be included in the materials, so the guides became very passive.

this session was actually quite engaging and well presented...but there was nothing that new in it to report. the role of academic as content provider vs. learning technologist as the person who uploads content and makes it work was picked up in the final presentation of the session.