Background

As online learning develops an increasingly important role in medical education, new online teaching modalities are arising all the time. One such teaching modality that is gaining popularity among medical students is the "inked" video, a type of animated video that utilizes a virtual blackboard. Student reviews suggest that the dynamic style of the inked video allows it to teach more efficiently than traditional teaching modalities, but currently there is no quantitative evidence to support or guide the use of this teaching modality.

Hypothesis

When compared to the traditional recorded PowerPoint lecture, online inked videos teach the same pathophysiology concepts to pre-clerkship medical students in a shorter amount of time.

Method

A randomized, crossover-design study was conducted with second-year medical students at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles (n = 22). Students were randomized to 2 groups. Each group received 2 lessons on 2 different pathophysiology topics: one via a shorter inked video and the other via a longer recorded PowerPoint lecture. Two sets of dependent variables were used to test modality effects: immediate post-tests scores and delayed retention post-test scores. A perceptions survey was also administered to assess student preferences between the 2 teaching modalities.

Results

Students performed similarly on immediate and delayed post-tests for the shorter inked videos and the longer recorded PowerPoint lectures (P > .05). Students reported greater engagement (P < .05) and greater satisfaction with learning (P < .05) with the inked videos than the recorded PowerPoint lectures.

Conclusions

This study, although limited by its small-scale and single-institution design, provides preliminary evidence that online inked videos may be a more efficient and non-inferior alternative to recorded PowerPoint lectures.

Although recent efforts have been engaged to combat bias in medical education, minimal attention has been dedicated to developing antiracism curricula for medical students. We developed a year-long discussion curriculum for 175 first-year medical students centered around Ibram X. Kendis How to be an Antiracist. The discussion curriculum consisted of six, 2 hour seminars. We evaluated students perceptions regarding discussing and actively addressing racism. Students reported an improved ability and comfort to discuss and address racism within healthcare settings. These data suggest that antiracism discussion curricula may be effective for training medical students to address racism in their future careers.

Introduction

Various methods have been used to teach crew resource management (CRM) skills, including high-fidelity patient simulation. It is unclear whether a didactic lecture added on to a simulation-based curriculum can augment a learner's education.

Methods

Using an already existing simulation-based curriculum for interdisciplinary teams composed of both residents and nurses, teams were randomised to an intervention or control arm. The intervention arm had a 10 min didactic lecture after the first of three simulation scenarios, while the control arm did all three simulation scenarios without any didactic component. The CRM skills of teams were then scored, and improvement was compared between the two arms using general estimating equations.

Results

The differences in mean teamwork scores between the intervention and control arms in scenarios 2 and 3 were not statistically significant. Mean scores in the intervention arm were lower than in the control arm (-0.57, p=0.78 for scenario 2; -3.12, p=0.13 for scenario 3), and the increase in scores from scenario 2 to 3 was lower in the intervention arm than in the control arm (difference in differences: -2.55, p=0.73).

Conclusions

Adding a didactic lecture to a simulation-based curriculum geared at teaching CRM skills to interdisciplinary teams did not lead to significantly improved teamwork.