Journal of Interprofessional Care
ISSN: 1356-1820 (Print) 1469-9567 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ijic20
Student perspectives of an online module for teaching physical assessment skills for dentistry, dental hygiene, and pharmacy students Christine Leong, Christopher Louizos, Chelsea Currie, Lorraine Glassford, Neal M. Davies, Douglas Brothwell & Robert Renaud To cite this article: Christine Leong, Christopher Louizos, Chelsea Currie, Lorraine Glassford, Neal M. Davies, Douglas Brothwell & Robert Renaud (2015) Student perspectives of an online module for teaching physical assessment skills for dentistry, dental hygiene, and pharmacy students, Journal of Interprofessional Care, 29:4, 383-385 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/13561820.2014.977380
Published online: 06 Nov 2014.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 91
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ijic20 Download by: [University of California, San Diego]
Date: 06 November 2015, At: 07:48
http://informahealthcare.com/jic ISSN: 1356-1820 (print), 1469-9567 (electronic) J Interprof Care, 2015; 29(4): 383–385 ! 2015 Informa UK Ltd. DOI: 10.3109/13561820.2014.977380
SHORT REPORT
Student perspectives of an online module for teaching physical assessment skills for dentistry, dental hygiene, and pharmacy students
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:48 06 November 2015
Christine Leong1, Christopher Louizos1, Chelsea Currie2, Lorraine Glassford3, Neal M. Davies1, Douglas Brothwell4 and Robert Renaud5 1
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 2Department of Restorative Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 3School of Dental Hygiene, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 4Faculty of Dentistry, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and 5Department of Education Admin Foundations and Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Abstract
Keywords
The integration of web-based learning into the curriculum of healthcare education has significantly increased over the past decade. This article aims to describe the student perspectives of an online module to teach physical assessment skills for pharmacy, dentistry, and dental hygiene students. A total of 103 students completed the online module: 48 thirdyear pharmacy students, 29 first-year dentistry students, and 26 first-year dental hygiene students. Students were asked to rate a list of 10 statements on a 5-point Likert scale on the relevance, impact, and overall satisfaction of the online module. Eighty-four of the 103 students (81.6% response rate) completed the questionnaire. While most students responded positively to the online content, pharmacy students responded more favorably compared with students from Dentistry and Dental Hygiene. These findings provide useful information to identify areas in which the web-based module can be improved for teaching skills in physical assessment across multiple healthcare programs.
Evaluation research, e-learning, interdisciplinary, interprofessional education, multidisciplinary, surveys
Introduction The integration of web-based learning into the curriculum of healthcare education has significantly increased over the past decade. These e-learning programs offer many benefits, including flexibility in accessing content for the student, and ability to reach a larger audience without increasing instructor time. Web-based programs have also been used to improve self-directed learning across disciplines in academic settings (Hoffman, Hosokawa, Blake, Headrick, & Johnson, 2006; Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2011). Few studies have examined the integration of an online module into the curriculum of more than one healthcare education program. This article will describe the implementation of an online module to deliver content on skills in physical assessment of vital signs for the Faculty of Dentistry, School of Dental Hygiene, and Faculty of Pharmacy. Student perspectives on the online module will also be described.
Program description
History Received 11 April 2014 Revised 30 July 2014 Accepted 13 October 2014 Published online 4 November 2014
and Pharmacy. The module was a new addition to the Faculty of Pharmacy curriculum to keep in line with the most recent accreditation standards outlined by the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs (CCAPP) (CCAPP, 2013). In contrast, the Dentistry and Dental Hygiene had previously taught physical assessment skills using a face-to-face lecture by instructors from their respective programs. The current online module was used in place of these in-person lectures for the 2013–2014 academic year. The online module included three 20-min PowerPointÕ (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA) lectures with recorded audio: (1) Introduction to Physical Assessment; (2) Vital Signs: Blood Pressure; and (3) Vital Signs: Pulse Rate, Respiratory Rate, Temperature. A five-question multiple choice assessment followed each lecture. All content was developed by an assistant professor and a registered clinical pharmacist from the Faculty of Pharmacy with clinical experience and formal educational training in physical assessment. The module was hosted on the Desire2LearnÕ (D2L) Learning Management System (Kitchener, ON, Canada).
The online module on physical assessment skills was incorporated into three health science programs: Dentistry, Dental Hygiene,
Methods
Correspondence: Christine Leong, College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, 750 McDermot Avenue, Winnipeg R3E 0T5, Manitoba, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
A post-intervention research design was used for this study. Forty-eight third-year pharmacy students, 29 first-year dentistry students, and 26 first-year dental hygiene students enrolled in their respective programs during 2013–2014 academic year completed the online module. Student perspectives of the online module were obtained through a paper-based questionnaire that
384
C. Leong et al.
J Interprof Care, 2015; 29(4): 383–385
Table I. Item descriptives and mean comparisons between programs.
Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:48 06 November 2015
9 10
The Online Content supported my learning of skills in physical assessment The Online Content helped me understand the clinical aspects of performing a physical assessment of vitals on a patient The Online Content provided me with more confidence to perform a physical assessment of vitals on a live person Navigation through the Online Content was easy The Online Content helped me to learn on my own The depth of information in the Online Content was just right The information in the Online Content was relevant to my learning The Online Content helped me learn things I would not have accessed from other sources (e.g. books, Internet) I was overall satisfied with the Online Content I would recommend other students use the Online Content for learning Skills in Physical Assessment
All students (SD)
Pharmacy students (n ¼ 43) (SD)
Dentistry students (n ¼ 16) (SD)
Hygiene students (n ¼ 25) (SD)
4.04 (0.74)
4.33ab (0.57)
3.56a** (0.81)
3.84b* (0.75)
4.12 (0.72)
4.42ab (0.50)
3.69a** (0.60)
3.88b** (0.88)
3.74 (0.88)
4.16ab (0.62)
3.06a*** (1.06)
3.44b** (0.77)
3.81 3.56a*** 3.60a** 3.63ac
3.88 3.84b** 3.88b* 4.32c**
3.60 4.11 4.08 4.23
(0.98) (0.75) (0.75) (0.72)
3.35 4.47ab 4.37ab 4.40a***
(1.02) (0.51) (0.49) (0.59)
(0.83) (0.97) (0.91) (0.96)
(0.93) (0.62) (0.83) (0.56)
3.32 (0.94)
3.62ab (0.84)
2.94a* (1.06)
3.04b* (0.89)
4.00 (0.76) 3.90 (0.86)
4.35ab (0.65) 4.33ab (0.64)
3.44a*** (0.73) 3.13a*** (0.89)
3.76b** (0.66) 3.68b** (0.75)
a
Pharmacy vs. dentistry. Pharmacy vs. dental hygiene. c Dentistry vs. dental hygiene. All 10 items demonstrated a good level of internal consistency ( ¼ 0.87). There was a significant difference in the means between the three programs (F(2,81) ¼ 15.25, p50.001; one-way ANOVA1). Each cell contains the item mean and (SD). Means in a row sharing subscripts are significantly different from each other. *p50.05, **p50.01, ***p50.001. b
used a 5-point Likert scale to determine student agreement with 10 statements regarding the quality of the online module. Open-ended comments were also encouraged. This study was exempted from review by the University Human Research Ethics Board.
Results The overall response rate of participating students who completed the questionnaire was 81.6% (84 of 103). The response rate varied among programs with 43 of 48 students (89.6%) from Pharmacy, 16 of 29 students (55.2%) from Dentistry, and 25 of 26 students (96.2%) from Dental Hygiene. Student ratings from the 10-item questionnaire Table I shows the mean rating of students from each program on each questionnaire item. Pairwise comparisons using the Bonferroni test found that while the mean rating of Pharmacy students (41.7 ± 4.3) was significantly greater than the mean student ratings from both Dentistry (34.1 ± 6.0) and Dental Hygiene (37.6 ± 5.1), the mean ratings from students in Dentistry and Dental Hygiene did not differ significantly. The pattern of differences for the individual items between the three programs was similar to what was found above in the comparison of total scores, except for item 4. Item 4 asked students to judge the ease of navigation through the online content, whereas the other items focused on content. Although students from Dentistry (3.8 ± 0.83) and Dental Hygiene (3.9 ± 0.93) rated the ease of navigation through the Online Content more favorably than did Pharmacy students (3.4 ± 1.02),
the observed differences were not statistically significant (p40.05). Student open-ended comments on the online module Five different trends inherent in the student comments were identified: (1) Ten positive statements about the module quality Pharmacy student: ‘‘It was easy to work through and the pre-recorded videos progressed at a nice rate for content retention. Quiz difficulty was appropriate for each section and it examined what I expected it to’’. (2) Six negative statements about the module quality Dentistry student: ‘‘Online course taught theory behind vital signs, which was overwhelming and too in-depth for the dental clinic setting’’. (3) Eleven recommendations for quality improvement related to the audio-visual aspects of the module Pharmacy student: ‘‘The volume of the presentation videos was very quiet (even hear at max volume)’’. (4) Five recommendations for quality improvement related to the use of D2L. Pharmacy student: ‘‘Would rather have the information on JUMP and not D2L (would make accessibility a lot better)’’. (5) Five recommendations for quality improvement related to the on-line quiz Dental hygiene student: ‘‘Allow us to see what questions we got wrong and what the correct answer was on the quizzes’’.
Discussion 1
Because the students’ responses represented an ordinal variable, the group ratings were compared with a Kruskal–Wallis test followed by a Mann–Whitney U test for each pairwise comparison. The results of these nonparametric analyses matched those obtained from the ANOVA and Bonferroni tests. The results of the ANOVA and Bonferroni tests are reported because the mean scores are more readily interpretable.
We found that the degree of student satisfaction with the online module was high, providing us with clear feedback that a selfdirected, online format for learning physical assessment is well received by the students from three different academic programs. In our analysis, students from Pharmacy appeared to respond
Online module for interdisciplinary learning
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:48 06 November 2015
DOI: 10.3109/13561820.2014.977380
more favorably to the online module compared with students from Dentistry and Dental Hygiene. There were some limitations that might explain the observed differences across the programs. For instance, at the time of module completion, pharmacy students were in their third program year whereas students from Dentistry and Dental Hygiene were in their first year. As a result, the junior students may have been less able to envision the applicability of the content in a clinical context compared to the senior students. Physical assessment was also a new addition to the Faculty of Pharmacy curriculum, whereas Dentistry and Dental Hygiene have been delivering this course in the form of face-to-face lectures in previous years. Therefore, it is possible that these latter students may not be receptive to the change in the delivery of the material for the current year. The effect that the lower response rate may have had from dentistry students is unknown, but volunteer bias and the timing of survey administration may have been a confounding issue. The fact that D2L is the primary online Learning Management System for the Dentistry and Dental Hygiene program, but not for pharmacy may explain the observed differences in student satisfaction with the D2L platform. Lastly, pharmacy students had regular contact with the coordinator, whereas students from the other faculties did not. Previous studies have described and evaluated the use of online learning in health professions education (Churnley-Jones, Dobbie, & Alford, 2002; Cook et al., 2008; Hoffman et al., 2006; Khogali et al., 2011; Means et al., 2011); however, large heterogeneity across studies exist in terms of measured outcomes and the study population included. One meta-analysis on Internet-based learning in health education reported large positive effects on knowledge outcomes and skills compared with no intervention, but no difference in satisfaction, knowledge, or skills when compared with other non-Internet-learning methods (Cook et al., 2008). However, the authors noted that there was large heterogeneity across studies in all analyses (Cook et al., 2008). Few studies have examined the integration of an online module into the curriculum of more than one healthcare education program. Based on these findings, a number of revisions to the online module have been made. These include providing answers to the online quiz, improving the sound quality of the lectures, and providing an orientation to D2L. The use of the discussion board on D2L will also be encouraged to provide students with better access to the coordinator.
385
Conclusion Based on our initial experience and student responses and overall analysis of this physical assessment and vital signs training program, we conclude that a web-based module has the potential to be used as an effective tool for teaching baseline information on physical assessment in a media that is accessible to students from multiple healthcare programs.
Acknowledgements The authors want to thank Dr. Cheryl Kristjanson from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Manitoba for her consultation on program evaluation during the development of the manuscript.
Declaration of interest The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the writing and content of the paper.
References CCAPP (The Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs). Accreditation standards for the first professional degree in pharmacy programs. Effective January 2013. Retrieved from http:// www.ccapp-accredit.ca/site/pdfs/university/CCAPP_accred_standards_ degree_2012.pdf. Churnley-Jones, H., Dobbie, A., & Alford, C. (2002). Web-based learning: Sound educational method or hype? A review of the valuation literature. Academic Medicine, 77, S86–S93. Cook, D., Levinson, A., Garside, S., Dupras, D., Erwin, P., & Montori, V. (2008). Internet-based learning in the health professions: A meta analysis. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 300, 1181–1196. Hoffman, K., Hosokawa, M., Blake, R., Headrick, L., & Johnson, G. (2006). Problem-based learning outcomes: Ten years of experience at the university of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine. Academic Medicine, 81, 617–625. Khogali, S., Davies, D., Donnan, P., Gray, A., Harden, R., McDonald, J., . . . Yu, N. (2011). Integration of e-learning resources into a medical school curriculum. Medical Teacher, 33, 311–318. Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2011). US Department of Education, Office of Planning Evaluation, and Policy Development: Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/ finalreport.pdf.
ISSN: 1356-1820 (Print) 1469-9567 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ijic20
Student perspectives of an online module for teaching physical assessment skills for dentistry, dental hygiene, and pharmacy students Christine Leong, Christopher Louizos, Chelsea Currie, Lorraine Glassford, Neal M. Davies, Douglas Brothwell & Robert Renaud To cite this article: Christine Leong, Christopher Louizos, Chelsea Currie, Lorraine Glassford, Neal M. Davies, Douglas Brothwell & Robert Renaud (2015) Student perspectives of an online module for teaching physical assessment skills for dentistry, dental hygiene, and pharmacy students, Journal of Interprofessional Care, 29:4, 383-385 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/13561820.2014.977380
Published online: 06 Nov 2014.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 91
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ijic20 Download by: [University of California, San Diego]
Date: 06 November 2015, At: 07:48
http://informahealthcare.com/jic ISSN: 1356-1820 (print), 1469-9567 (electronic) J Interprof Care, 2015; 29(4): 383–385 ! 2015 Informa UK Ltd. DOI: 10.3109/13561820.2014.977380
SHORT REPORT
Student perspectives of an online module for teaching physical assessment skills for dentistry, dental hygiene, and pharmacy students
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:48 06 November 2015
Christine Leong1, Christopher Louizos1, Chelsea Currie2, Lorraine Glassford3, Neal M. Davies1, Douglas Brothwell4 and Robert Renaud5 1
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 2Department of Restorative Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 3School of Dental Hygiene, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, 4Faculty of Dentistry, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and 5Department of Education Admin Foundations and Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Abstract
Keywords
The integration of web-based learning into the curriculum of healthcare education has significantly increased over the past decade. This article aims to describe the student perspectives of an online module to teach physical assessment skills for pharmacy, dentistry, and dental hygiene students. A total of 103 students completed the online module: 48 thirdyear pharmacy students, 29 first-year dentistry students, and 26 first-year dental hygiene students. Students were asked to rate a list of 10 statements on a 5-point Likert scale on the relevance, impact, and overall satisfaction of the online module. Eighty-four of the 103 students (81.6% response rate) completed the questionnaire. While most students responded positively to the online content, pharmacy students responded more favorably compared with students from Dentistry and Dental Hygiene. These findings provide useful information to identify areas in which the web-based module can be improved for teaching skills in physical assessment across multiple healthcare programs.
Evaluation research, e-learning, interdisciplinary, interprofessional education, multidisciplinary, surveys
Introduction The integration of web-based learning into the curriculum of healthcare education has significantly increased over the past decade. These e-learning programs offer many benefits, including flexibility in accessing content for the student, and ability to reach a larger audience without increasing instructor time. Web-based programs have also been used to improve self-directed learning across disciplines in academic settings (Hoffman, Hosokawa, Blake, Headrick, & Johnson, 2006; Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2011). Few studies have examined the integration of an online module into the curriculum of more than one healthcare education program. This article will describe the implementation of an online module to deliver content on skills in physical assessment of vital signs for the Faculty of Dentistry, School of Dental Hygiene, and Faculty of Pharmacy. Student perspectives on the online module will also be described.
Program description
History Received 11 April 2014 Revised 30 July 2014 Accepted 13 October 2014 Published online 4 November 2014
and Pharmacy. The module was a new addition to the Faculty of Pharmacy curriculum to keep in line with the most recent accreditation standards outlined by the Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs (CCAPP) (CCAPP, 2013). In contrast, the Dentistry and Dental Hygiene had previously taught physical assessment skills using a face-to-face lecture by instructors from their respective programs. The current online module was used in place of these in-person lectures for the 2013–2014 academic year. The online module included three 20-min PowerPointÕ (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA) lectures with recorded audio: (1) Introduction to Physical Assessment; (2) Vital Signs: Blood Pressure; and (3) Vital Signs: Pulse Rate, Respiratory Rate, Temperature. A five-question multiple choice assessment followed each lecture. All content was developed by an assistant professor and a registered clinical pharmacist from the Faculty of Pharmacy with clinical experience and formal educational training in physical assessment. The module was hosted on the Desire2LearnÕ (D2L) Learning Management System (Kitchener, ON, Canada).
The online module on physical assessment skills was incorporated into three health science programs: Dentistry, Dental Hygiene,
Methods
Correspondence: Christine Leong, College of Pharmacy, University of Manitoba, 750 McDermot Avenue, Winnipeg R3E 0T5, Manitoba, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]
A post-intervention research design was used for this study. Forty-eight third-year pharmacy students, 29 first-year dentistry students, and 26 first-year dental hygiene students enrolled in their respective programs during 2013–2014 academic year completed the online module. Student perspectives of the online module were obtained through a paper-based questionnaire that
384
C. Leong et al.
J Interprof Care, 2015; 29(4): 383–385
Table I. Item descriptives and mean comparisons between programs.
Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:48 06 November 2015
9 10
The Online Content supported my learning of skills in physical assessment The Online Content helped me understand the clinical aspects of performing a physical assessment of vitals on a patient The Online Content provided me with more confidence to perform a physical assessment of vitals on a live person Navigation through the Online Content was easy The Online Content helped me to learn on my own The depth of information in the Online Content was just right The information in the Online Content was relevant to my learning The Online Content helped me learn things I would not have accessed from other sources (e.g. books, Internet) I was overall satisfied with the Online Content I would recommend other students use the Online Content for learning Skills in Physical Assessment
All students (SD)
Pharmacy students (n ¼ 43) (SD)
Dentistry students (n ¼ 16) (SD)
Hygiene students (n ¼ 25) (SD)
4.04 (0.74)
4.33ab (0.57)
3.56a** (0.81)
3.84b* (0.75)
4.12 (0.72)
4.42ab (0.50)
3.69a** (0.60)
3.88b** (0.88)
3.74 (0.88)
4.16ab (0.62)
3.06a*** (1.06)
3.44b** (0.77)
3.81 3.56a*** 3.60a** 3.63ac
3.88 3.84b** 3.88b* 4.32c**
3.60 4.11 4.08 4.23
(0.98) (0.75) (0.75) (0.72)
3.35 4.47ab 4.37ab 4.40a***
(1.02) (0.51) (0.49) (0.59)
(0.83) (0.97) (0.91) (0.96)
(0.93) (0.62) (0.83) (0.56)
3.32 (0.94)
3.62ab (0.84)
2.94a* (1.06)
3.04b* (0.89)
4.00 (0.76) 3.90 (0.86)
4.35ab (0.65) 4.33ab (0.64)
3.44a*** (0.73) 3.13a*** (0.89)
3.76b** (0.66) 3.68b** (0.75)
a
Pharmacy vs. dentistry. Pharmacy vs. dental hygiene. c Dentistry vs. dental hygiene. All 10 items demonstrated a good level of internal consistency ( ¼ 0.87). There was a significant difference in the means between the three programs (F(2,81) ¼ 15.25, p50.001; one-way ANOVA1). Each cell contains the item mean and (SD). Means in a row sharing subscripts are significantly different from each other. *p50.05, **p50.01, ***p50.001. b
used a 5-point Likert scale to determine student agreement with 10 statements regarding the quality of the online module. Open-ended comments were also encouraged. This study was exempted from review by the University Human Research Ethics Board.
Results The overall response rate of participating students who completed the questionnaire was 81.6% (84 of 103). The response rate varied among programs with 43 of 48 students (89.6%) from Pharmacy, 16 of 29 students (55.2%) from Dentistry, and 25 of 26 students (96.2%) from Dental Hygiene. Student ratings from the 10-item questionnaire Table I shows the mean rating of students from each program on each questionnaire item. Pairwise comparisons using the Bonferroni test found that while the mean rating of Pharmacy students (41.7 ± 4.3) was significantly greater than the mean student ratings from both Dentistry (34.1 ± 6.0) and Dental Hygiene (37.6 ± 5.1), the mean ratings from students in Dentistry and Dental Hygiene did not differ significantly. The pattern of differences for the individual items between the three programs was similar to what was found above in the comparison of total scores, except for item 4. Item 4 asked students to judge the ease of navigation through the online content, whereas the other items focused on content. Although students from Dentistry (3.8 ± 0.83) and Dental Hygiene (3.9 ± 0.93) rated the ease of navigation through the Online Content more favorably than did Pharmacy students (3.4 ± 1.02),
the observed differences were not statistically significant (p40.05). Student open-ended comments on the online module Five different trends inherent in the student comments were identified: (1) Ten positive statements about the module quality Pharmacy student: ‘‘It was easy to work through and the pre-recorded videos progressed at a nice rate for content retention. Quiz difficulty was appropriate for each section and it examined what I expected it to’’. (2) Six negative statements about the module quality Dentistry student: ‘‘Online course taught theory behind vital signs, which was overwhelming and too in-depth for the dental clinic setting’’. (3) Eleven recommendations for quality improvement related to the audio-visual aspects of the module Pharmacy student: ‘‘The volume of the presentation videos was very quiet (even hear at max volume)’’. (4) Five recommendations for quality improvement related to the use of D2L. Pharmacy student: ‘‘Would rather have the information on JUMP and not D2L (would make accessibility a lot better)’’. (5) Five recommendations for quality improvement related to the on-line quiz Dental hygiene student: ‘‘Allow us to see what questions we got wrong and what the correct answer was on the quizzes’’.
Discussion 1
Because the students’ responses represented an ordinal variable, the group ratings were compared with a Kruskal–Wallis test followed by a Mann–Whitney U test for each pairwise comparison. The results of these nonparametric analyses matched those obtained from the ANOVA and Bonferroni tests. The results of the ANOVA and Bonferroni tests are reported because the mean scores are more readily interpretable.
We found that the degree of student satisfaction with the online module was high, providing us with clear feedback that a selfdirected, online format for learning physical assessment is well received by the students from three different academic programs. In our analysis, students from Pharmacy appeared to respond
Online module for interdisciplinary learning
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 07:48 06 November 2015
DOI: 10.3109/13561820.2014.977380
more favorably to the online module compared with students from Dentistry and Dental Hygiene. There were some limitations that might explain the observed differences across the programs. For instance, at the time of module completion, pharmacy students were in their third program year whereas students from Dentistry and Dental Hygiene were in their first year. As a result, the junior students may have been less able to envision the applicability of the content in a clinical context compared to the senior students. Physical assessment was also a new addition to the Faculty of Pharmacy curriculum, whereas Dentistry and Dental Hygiene have been delivering this course in the form of face-to-face lectures in previous years. Therefore, it is possible that these latter students may not be receptive to the change in the delivery of the material for the current year. The effect that the lower response rate may have had from dentistry students is unknown, but volunteer bias and the timing of survey administration may have been a confounding issue. The fact that D2L is the primary online Learning Management System for the Dentistry and Dental Hygiene program, but not for pharmacy may explain the observed differences in student satisfaction with the D2L platform. Lastly, pharmacy students had regular contact with the coordinator, whereas students from the other faculties did not. Previous studies have described and evaluated the use of online learning in health professions education (Churnley-Jones, Dobbie, & Alford, 2002; Cook et al., 2008; Hoffman et al., 2006; Khogali et al., 2011; Means et al., 2011); however, large heterogeneity across studies exist in terms of measured outcomes and the study population included. One meta-analysis on Internet-based learning in health education reported large positive effects on knowledge outcomes and skills compared with no intervention, but no difference in satisfaction, knowledge, or skills when compared with other non-Internet-learning methods (Cook et al., 2008). However, the authors noted that there was large heterogeneity across studies in all analyses (Cook et al., 2008). Few studies have examined the integration of an online module into the curriculum of more than one healthcare education program. Based on these findings, a number of revisions to the online module have been made. These include providing answers to the online quiz, improving the sound quality of the lectures, and providing an orientation to D2L. The use of the discussion board on D2L will also be encouraged to provide students with better access to the coordinator.
385
Conclusion Based on our initial experience and student responses and overall analysis of this physical assessment and vital signs training program, we conclude that a web-based module has the potential to be used as an effective tool for teaching baseline information on physical assessment in a media that is accessible to students from multiple healthcare programs.
Acknowledgements The authors want to thank Dr. Cheryl Kristjanson from the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Manitoba for her consultation on program evaluation during the development of the manuscript.
Declaration of interest The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the writing and content of the paper.
References CCAPP (The Canadian Council for Accreditation of Pharmacy Programs). Accreditation standards for the first professional degree in pharmacy programs. Effective January 2013. Retrieved from http:// www.ccapp-accredit.ca/site/pdfs/university/CCAPP_accred_standards_ degree_2012.pdf. Churnley-Jones, H., Dobbie, A., & Alford, C. (2002). Web-based learning: Sound educational method or hype? A review of the valuation literature. Academic Medicine, 77, S86–S93. Cook, D., Levinson, A., Garside, S., Dupras, D., Erwin, P., & Montori, V. (2008). Internet-based learning in the health professions: A meta analysis. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 300, 1181–1196. Hoffman, K., Hosokawa, M., Blake, R., Headrick, L., & Johnson, G. (2006). Problem-based learning outcomes: Ten years of experience at the university of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine. Academic Medicine, 81, 617–625. Khogali, S., Davies, D., Donnan, P., Gray, A., Harden, R., McDonald, J., . . . Yu, N. (2011). Integration of e-learning resources into a medical school curriculum. Medical Teacher, 33, 311–318. Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2011). US Department of Education, Office of Planning Evaluation, and Policy Development: Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/ finalreport.pdf.
