MSE Article Review

To all IAMSE members -

In the inaugural issue of the Medical Science Educator, the new journal of the International Association of Medical Science Educators (IAMSE), there are several interesting articles that focus on new approaches to medical education. One article that specifically caught my eye was “Use of Lecture Recordings in Medical Education” by 5 educators from Tulane School of Medicine. I was particularly interested in the paper because our medical school began recording lectures coupled to the PowerPoint presentations several years ago as described in this paper but I had not seen any studies on outcomes measured. This study provided some interesting conclusions. First it was reported that greater than 80% of the students used the lecture recordings to replace or supplement their lecture notes. The authors observed that after instituting the audiovisual lecture material online it was reported that there was less than 9% decrease in lecture attendance for those students responding to the questionnaire. Interestingly, the impression of the students was that the introduction of the audiovisual material online increased their performance on exams but in most cases the Tulane study could not observe an increase in grades for the students whether they used the online resources or not. But the perception for the students was overwhelmingly positive.

This article appears in Medical Sciences Educator Volume 21-1:21-26 and this volume is available at the IAMSE web page http://www.MedicalScienceEducator.org. Your IAMSE member ID / Password will be required to access subsequent issues of the journal.

Please remember the Medical Science Educator is a benefit of membership in IAMSE. You are encouraged to submit reports of your medical education scholarship (for example, research or innovations).

Take a look and contribute your ideas.

Dan Schulze
Publication Committee
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