We are our choices: Learning to Make Good Decisions

Welcome and Overview – Sheetal Kavia, eProjects Manager, and Professor Jenny Higham, Principal from St George’s University of London

The Impact of Our Journey with Virtual Scenarios – Professor Terry Poulton, Professor of eLearning in Medical Education, St Georges, University of London

Following the early development of VP author/players, the eViP European programme promoted the importance of the virtual patient standard, and its members inspired the search for better and more interactive authoring tools. This presentation will focus on the more recent developments and grant-funded programmes across the Eurasian continent, reporting on the outputs from four major European-funded programmes over the last 6 years involving 29 funded partners, and many more associate partners. It will consider the range of outputs by each programme viz curriculum transformation across 6 institutions in ePBLnet, the experiential impact of VP training in Croesus, and a randomised trial of the impact of interactive Virtual Patients  on educational performance in TAME. Finally, the impact of the capstone project, ‘Widening Access to Virtual Patients’ (WAVES) will be considered in drawing together this network of participants from nine linked projects - past, present and yet to come - into a community of practice across Northern Europe, Western Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, China and SE Asia.

Keynote Presentation: Scenario-Based Educational Software – From its Roots in Academia to Global Commercialization – Dr James B. McGee, Assistant Dean for Medical Education Technology, University of Pittsburgh

Dr. McGee spent the last twenty-two years developing scenario-based software and promoting its use in healthcare education and training. Starting with an idea at Harvard, then growing his virtual patient software at the University of Pittsburgh and eventually forming a company to sell and distribute outside of academia. Many lessons were learned about innovation, technology, working with business and actually making a profit. Not all was as predicted. In this presentation Dr. McGee will share his experience developing virtual scenario education while promoting and supporting scenario-based learning from the perspective of both a full-time academic and a participant in the for-profit commercial world.

Widening Access to Virtual Educational Scenarios – Sheetal Kavia, eProjects Manager, St Georges, University of London

Virtual Scenarios are resources used to deliver scenario-based learning in many different learning settings and styles. The WAVES project brings together 6 different organisations from across Europe to share their experience and knowledge on the use of Virtual Scenario. Together with a wider community of organisations within the WAVES Network this information is shared via a two-part toolkit. The community is growing and evolving with new projects and research.

Training Against Medical Error (TAME) - Trupti Jivram, eLearning Manager, St George’s, University of London

In education learners are taught to carry out procedures and processes in the right way. However, we do not always teach them how to avoid error or even mention errors which are commonly made in the workplace. Through the TAME project a number of institutions from Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Vietnam implemented training against medical error virtual scenarios in their curricula following the example from St George’s University. Key staff in each institution were then trained to author their own Error virtual scenarios to implement into modules within their curriculum.

Virtual Patients Enhancing Lifelong Learning in Urology and Oncology – Daniel Schwarz, Associate Professor, Masaryk University

Lifelong learning of physicians in Czechia is organized by professional medical associations receiving significant support from pharma and biotechnology industries. Despite the delayed onset of technology-enhanced learning, there have been several e‑learning projects and online platforms for case-based learning launched recently. “Renal carcinoma and virtual patients” (ca-ledviny.cz) is a new project aimed at scenario-based learning with all cases associated with this type of kidney cancer. Although the target group involves oncologists and urologists, this educational platform has the potential to become an interesting learning resource for specialists in other medical disciplines as well. The experience from the WAVES knowledge alliance helped to design a sustainable project and to accelerate its early phase.

Virtual Scenarios at Bayer – Peter Brown, Head of Learning Innovation and Design, Bayer Plc

Explore why Virtual Scenarios are used at Bayer to improve the impact of learning that leads to behavioural change. See how Bayer creates Virtual Scenarios using varying levels of investment and richness and find out what our learners think.

Keynote Presentation: Co-designing Virtual Scenarios for Learning – Professor Diana Laurillard, Professor of Learning with Digital Technologies, UCL Institute of Education

The presentation will draw on recent experience in other domains to propose a model for this community to build knowledge about scenario design using digital methods. Building on the techniques already in use in the medical field, it will illustrate the use of a free, open, and online ‘Learning Design’ tool, and a peer-review activity within a MOOC. The design tool embeds the scenario-design guidelines, demonstrates exemplar scenarios, and provides the starter kit for users to customise a scenario design. The MOOC turns this into a collaborative knowledge-building exercise