Tim Vincent BSMS Learning Technologist

One of the main medical education conferences is the ASME Annual Scientific Meeting which, this year, took place at Exeter university. BSMS had the highest representation ever with several oral presentations and posters, a workshop, and a teaching award (well done Claire!). I am a member of the ASME Technology Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (ASME TEL SIG) and, as such, was interested to see the growing prevalence and quality of education research in this area. Here are the best bits from the conference from my perspective:

Reflection 1: The importance of Clinical Teaching Fellows. Looking around all the presentations and posters, they seem to be pivotal in medical schools and hospitals driving forward innovative educational initiatives, undertaking robust research, and disseminating the output. That has certainly been our experience at BSMS (we have had Andy, Becky, and Nikki with us this year and others before) – they have contributed a fantastic amount this year to our teaching activity and they have benefited from their year with us, too, taking their skills to . It would seem wise to continue to invest in this crucial role if we want to maintain high quality teaching and education research.

Reflection 2: The amount of Technology Enhanced Learning in the medical education community continues to grow. The number of presentations, workshops, and posters that involve digital teaching and learning resources was notable, higher than previous years. Encouragingly, this may be the inevitable and desirable trajectory where technology disappears into embedded practice.

Other sessions of note:

	#unofficialCSIM2 – Social media as a ‘parallel curriculum’ alongside regular lectures in Year 4 – supplementary resources (videos, quizzes, memory-aid images) provided through social media (Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat). 94% said they liked having these resources
Flipped classroom	Two sessions on this topic: One trying to improve Health Inequalities teaching sessions by providing a 1 hour online learning exercise (comprising quizzes, TED Talks and case studies) for the students to do prior to prior to in-class practice of communication skills with simulated patient. The second one doing a similar thing in radiology interpretation and also made use of iPads, quizzes, and drawing tools.
	MDTea Podcast – an excellent multidisciplinary team learning resource based on a podcast and an infographic. Here’s an example: Delirium. Simple and effective application of technology to strengthen a community of practice. Did have some funding and relies on Clinical Teaching Fellows to create content.
Mobile devices in #meded	Two oral presentations got top marks for citing BSMS research in mobile learning! Interestingly, both included similar findings around the impact of personal mobile devices in the clinical setting and the trust relationship in practice.  Another presentation was on the production of a mobile app – an interesting discussion of the process of working with clinicians and technical designers to produce a clinical guidelines app for an acute Trust.
360-degree video and VR	A surgical trainee used relatively cheap 360-degree video cameras and VR headsets to create induction videos to operating theatres, to help medical student orientate themselves to surroundings and procedures to save theatre and staff time.
Virtual Patients	Two presentations of note in this topic: One looked at students producing VPs as a learning exercise, which was good although resource-intensive for staff time and editing/approval. The second one demonstrated an fantastically helpful way (using Excel) of creating the complex branching pathway through the scenarios. This was applied to communication skills in mental health and the students found it very helpful.

If you would like to know any more about these sessions or potential contacts of the speakers/authors, do get in touch with me.