Oct 17 2012
Market Research ePortfolio software for supporting medical education
Medical schools are increasingly adopting Jerome Bruner’s philosophy of a spiral curriculum in medical teaching (Masters & Gibbs, 2007). Also referred to as the “spiral of learning”, the spiral curriculum involves iterative revision of topics, subjects or themes achieving more sophisticated level each time (Harden & Stamper, 1999). A course-based learning management system (LMS) such as Blackboard or Moodle interferes with the needs of a spiral curriculum (Masters & Gibbs, 2007) where students needs to go back to the previous material, reflect on it and then construct deeper learning on top as they progress into later years of the MD undergraduate program. In addition, medical schools are developing assessment strategies that integrate experiential and basic scientific knowledge (Cohen et al., 2011). Medical schools are in need of a portfolio-based system (ePortfolio) that can be used both as:
- Record of experiential learning and professional development for the students
- Assessment tool for formative and summative evaluation of conformance to competency requirements
A market research of ePortfolio applications shows that homegrown software is slightly more prevalent over vendor based options. Among vendor based options, the LMS specific ePortfolio software is quite popular although some medical schools use other, less popular software. Some medical schools that use Blackboard ePortfolio are not satisfied with the limited functionality of the software. Medical schools that use open source software prefer to use Mahara over other options and seem satisfied with its superior reflection, collaboration and assessment capabilities. PebblePad, a UK based vendor provides a powerful ePortfolio tool that is being used in various European medical schools. Medbiquitous, an organization that develops information technology standards for healthcare education and competence assessment is working on AAMC eFolio Connector or Lifelong Learning Briefcase specification and is targeted to release a version1 pilot in spring of 2013.
Read the full article here.
