Technology Changes

This subsection details faculty perspective on the most effective and challenging aspects of changes involving various instructional technology implementations.

Most Effective Aspects of Technology Changes:

The biggest theme that came up in this area was regarding the move to computer- based exams and what benefits faculty see for both their own tasks around exam

management as well as what is helpful for students. Instructors like the ease of use in creating, posting, and releasing exams to students electronically; this made their process much more efficient than when exams were paper-based. Instructors can create, score, and adjust exams with much more efficiency, and save paper at the same time. They like that this modality for exams led to the creation of a testing center that seats over 200 students, by repurposing and renovating a floor of the library that no longer contained stacks of books. Perhaps more importantly, instructors have been able to create benefits for students, such as meeting the goal of examining students in a way that more closely aligns with how the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) and other National Board of Medical Examiners (NMBE) tests are conducted. One respondent

summed it up as:

The biggest pluses of the computer based exams…is that the software mimics the students’ experience in their board exams. It's a way of getting the students ready, or getting them more comfortable to sit for the large exams.

Another benefit for students was having a greater ability to report out on students’ longitudinal performance in tagged key subject areas. Finally, multiple interview

respondents mentioned that the support they receive from technical staff who support both faculty and students with the exam process and training was excellent and made the transition to computer based exams as successful and comfortable as could be. Faculty mentioned that while computer based exams have been the standard for several years, they still appreciated the technical staff’s availability and support throughout the process and how those individuals interact with the exam vendor as needed to quickly resolve any issues that may arise.

For Lecture Capture recording of most of the first and second-year lectures, faculty found benefits with making lectures available outside of class for review, or having the ability to pull up the previous year’s lecture on similar content to post for a snow day school closing, or an ill instructor unable to come in for their scheduled session. They like the instructor’s ability to look back with a heat map to see what areas of a lecture were most watched, in case anything appears to have been troublesome or unclear. The following is a representative quote:

The general principle of just having the lecture available ...The pluses are pretty obvious. The students have access to it, with the right software they can speed it up and slow it down and study it at their own pace. They can review things, the instructors, again with the right software, can see a heat map of what the students are using.

For Virtual Microscopy, the instructors like having the ability to provide high quality material for the students. Because they are utilizing their laptops with an ability to look at and speak with their fellow students, the ability to work together is enhanced. Everyone has access to the exact same slide samples all at the same level of stain so there is a consistency that comes with that uniformity that has students feeling it is a more fair and efficient experience. One faculty member shared:

Virtual Microscopy was very appealing is that students had the

opportunity to work together much better than if we tried to get people to work together, they're looking down the microscope, especially if there's a pointer in the eye piece of the microscope, and when you switch people they move the binocular head to fit the distance between their eyes and that moves the pointer, so it's very hard for people to talk about what they're looking at. So Virtual Microscopy allows students to look at things and use the vocabulary. All of these are pedagogically advantageous for a person who's trying to learn what for some people is a very different new discipline.

Most Challenging Aspects of Technology Changes:

These changes had the fewest challenges since most respondents had favorable comments to make regarding technology. However, those items that did come up multiple times are important to note. One key theme was a wish for educational technology updates to be released on a different timeline. Educational technology vendors most often release updates in accordance with the traditional academic calendar of September-May, but pre-clerkship years of medical school currently start in mid-July for the second-year class, and early August for the first-year class. This schedule leaves no time for instructors or students to adjust to upgrades or enhancements changing the look or feel of educational technology software programs. It can also negatively impact student devices, such as when laptops are sold with the newest operating systems for Windows or Mac, yet the exam vendor’s software is still catching up to comply and be able to run on such latest releases. Tools like the learning management system go through updates or a system overhaul during the 4th _{of July holiday weekend (when most}

universities are at their quietest), but the medical school is already in session for clerkships and the Physician Assistant program, and school is about to start for the pre- clerkship years.

Other challenges include taking the time needed to learn and keep up with the various technologies which are ever-evolving. Countering a plus mentioned for Virtual Microscopy, some instructors think the students were better able to transfer the

knowledge of what they were looking at on physical slides compared to the virtual microscopy electronic slides.

Without having the physical slide, it's actually very difficult. Talking a generalization, students are all different from each other. It can be very challenging for a student to recognize what's an artifact versus what's a real one.

Also, some instructors describe a drop in in-class student attendance due to lecture recordings, which in turn affects students’ ability to ask questions directly and interact with instructors. Others find the laptop requirement coupled with lecture recording a distraction in the class and worry about student comprehension.

As a teacher, laptops and class recordings make teaching very difficult. When a student has a screen between them and the lecturers, this interferes with learning- the student looks at the screen, is often surfing the

web/checking email, and not making eye contact with the lecturer. The lecturer needs physical and verbal cues from the learner to know if the information was heard and understood. When students watch the recorded lecture, the teacher has no immediate feedback and cannot possibly know if the learner understood the info.

Falling outside of the studied changes, some faculty responded in the open-ended portion of the survey about challenges they have with hospital computers and restrictions and more archaic operating systems due to a lack of funding. They teach in the university side, but their offices are in the hospital side where the technology and network access does not match that of the university, so they feel limited in their ability to be innovative.