Title
Rapid application design of an electronic clinical skills portfolio for undergraduate medical students.
Abstract
The aim was to find how to use information and communication technology to present the clinical skills content of an undergraduate medical curriculum. Rapid application design was used to develop the product, and technical action research was used to evaluate the development process. A clinician-educator, two medical students, two computing science masters students, two other project workers, and a hospital education informatics lead, formed a design team. A sample of stakeholders took part in requirements planning workshops and continued to advise the team throughout the project. A university hospital had many features that favoured fast, inexpensive, and successful system development: a clearly defined and readily accessible user group; location of the development process close to end-users; fast, informal communication; leadership by highly motivated and senior end-users; devolved authority and lack of any rigidly imposed management structure; cooperation of clinicians because the project drew on their clinical expertise to achieve scholastic goals; a culture of learning and involvement of highly motivated students. A detailed specification was developed through storyboarding, use case diagramming, and evolutionary prototyping. A very usable working product was developed within weeks. "SkillsBase" is a database web application using Microsoft Active Server Pages, served from a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server operating system running Internet Information Server 5.0. Graphing functionality is provided by the KavaChart applet. It presents the skills curriculum, provides a password-protected portfolio function, and offers training materials. The curriculum can be presented in several different ways to help students reflect on their objectives and progress towards achieving them. The reflective portfolio function is entirely private to each student user and allows them to document their progress in attaining skills, as judged by self, peer and tutor assessment, and examinations. Training materials include web links and materials developed locally using pedagogic principles developed by the SkillsBase team. Although the usability of SkillsBase has been proven, uptake of software that has arisen 'bottom-up' from within the curriculum has proved slow. We plan to incorporate the SkillsBase services into a more comprehensive virtual managed learning environment, anticipating that presenting the functionality in an environment that is routinely used by students and teachers will increase uptake and use.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1016/j.cmpb.2004.12.001
Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine
Keywords
Field
DocType
undergraduate medical curriculum,development process close,medical education,computer-aided instruction,rapid application design,rapid application development,project worker,successful system development,design team,development process,skillsbase service,electronic clinical skills portfolio,skillsbase team,undergraduate medical student,skills curriculum,clinical skills,software design,clinical skills content
Pluralistic walkthrough,Rapid application development,Computer science,Usability,Knowledge management,Curriculum,Information and Communications Technology,Learning environment,Action research,Web application
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
78
1
0169-2607
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tim Dornan1101.14
Catherine Lee200.34
Adam Stopford300.34
Liam Hosie400.34
Neil Maredia500.34
Alan Rector61489161.78