The Association for Surgical Education

Impacting Surgical Education Globally

WS2-06: HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY TO SIMULTANEOUSLY TEACH LEARNERS AT MULTIPLE SITES
Committee on Education Technology1, Jaisa Olasky2, Roger Kim, MD3; 1ASE, 2Mount Auburn Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 3Southern Illinois University

 

Web conferencing technologies are a commonly used solution to working and socializing across long distances. These products enable users to save time by not having to travel for meetings. It has been trialed in various ways in medicine, both for use in patient care and medical education.  There is increased demand for this technology in medical education forums. Educators are seeking a tool that learners at multiple clinical sites can use to access standardized didactic sessions, tele-mentoring, journal clubs, and simulation curricula.  In addition, web conferencing allows experts at one institution to teach learners at another institution that might not have any experts in that particular field.

Some medical educators work at institutions with robust telecommunication capabilities but they may still be limited by access to the rooms that have it. Other medical educators and students may want an easy way to log in from various offices or classrooms or during the hours not suitable to have readily available IT support.

The ASE Education Technology Committee is proposing a workshop designed to teach educators about web-conferencing solutions that they can set up themselves in order to perform remote teaching. Some examples of this include Zoom conferencing, Skype and Adobe Connect.  Committee members will present information about some of the most useful web conferencing tools for surgical education and will provide attendees with an overview of published experiences with these technologies.  The attendees will then have an opportunity for guided learning with hands-on practice teaching each other with these tools.

The objectives of our workshop are:

  1. Participants will learn what options exist for using low cost, mobile technology as a solution for remote learning.
  2. Participants will learn about the most useful options in more detail in order to understand when to use each type of technology.
  3. Participants will gain understanding of the cost and quality factors of the various products.
  4. Participants will achieve competency with setting up and using the technology