Shiv Gaglani’s research while affiliated with University of Maryland, Baltimore and other places

Purpose: Adaptive learning requires frequent and valid assessments for learners to track progress against their goals. This study determined if multiple-choice questions (MCQs) “crowdsourced” from medical learners could meet the standards of many large-scale testing programs. Methods: Users of a medical education app (Osmosis.org, Baltimore, MD) volunteered to submit case-based MCQs. Eleven volunteers were selected to submit MCQs targeted to second year medical students. Two hundred MCQs were subjected to duplicate review by a panel of internal medicine faculty who rated each item for relevance, content accuracy, and quality of response option explanations. A sample of 121 items was pretested on clinical subject exams completed by a national sample of U.S. medical students. Results: Seventy-eight percent of the 200 MCQs met faculty reviewer standards based on relevance, accuracy, and quality of explanations. Of the 121 pretested MCQs, 50% met acceptable statistical criteria. The most common reasons for exclusion were that the item was too easy or had a low discrimination index. Conclusions: Crowdsourcing can efficiently yield high-quality assessment items that meet rigorous judgmental and statistical criteria. Similar models may be adopted by students and educators to augment item pools that support adaptive learning.

This article focuses on what Luis von Ahn called the “twofer,” that is, a single solution that elegantly addresses two problems on a large scale. We describe two of von Ahn’s creations: reCAPTCHA, which validates a human web presence while also digitizing hard-to-read words, and Duolingo, which teaches new languages while translating the web. We then consider how this approach can be applied to medical education. Embedding Wikipedia-editing into educational settings is one such solution that could both improve the quality of health information available to the public while enhancing the learning of future health professionals.

Purpose: Medical education videos can enhance learning and easily integrate into common instructional methods. YouTube permits worldwide access to high-quality medical education videos; however, no studies have described the reach of medical education videos on YouTube or what topics are preferred. Method: One year of YouTube analytics data (February 1, 2016, to January 31, 2017) was collected for a medical education-focused channel called Osmosis. Created December 20, 2015, the channel had 189 disease-focused videos by January 2017. Viewer and subscriber data were analyzed according to the World Bank's 4 income and 7 region classifications. Topic viewing was analyzed according to income level. Results: The channel had accumulated 105,117 subscribers and 5,226,405 views for 20,153,093 minutes (38.3 years) from viewers located in 213/218 (97.7%) World Bank economies. While the number of videos increased 4.8 fold from February 2016 to January 2017, monthly views increased 50 fold and subscribers increased 117 fold. Low or middle income countries generated 2.2 million (42%) views and 53,000 (50%) subscribers, with similar view proportions across income level during the 12 months. A plurality of views (1.5 million, 29%) came from North America; Sub-Saharan Africa had the lowest number (150,000, 2.9%). Topic viewing generally corresponded to population health statistics. Conclusions: Medical education content on YouTube can immediately and consistently reach a global viewership with relevant content. Educators may consider posting videos to YouTube to reach a broad audience. Future work should seek to optimize assessment of learning and investigate how videos may affect patients.

Background: Adaptive learning platforms (ALPs) can revolutionize medical education by making learning more efficient, but their potential has not been realized because students do not use them persistently. Methods: We applied educational data mining methods to study United States medical students who used an ALP called Osmosis ( www.osmosis.org ) from 1 August 2014 to 31 July 2015. Multivariate logistic regressions modeled persistence on Osmosis as the dependent variable and Osmosis-collected variables as predictors. Results: The 6787 students included in our analysis responded to a total of 887,193 items, with 2138 (31.5%) using Osmosis persistently. Number of items per student, mobile device use, subscription payment, and group membership were independently associated with persisting (p < 0.001 in all models). Persistent users rated quality more favorably (p < 0.01) but were not more confident in answer selections (p = 0.80). While persisters were more accurate than non-persisters (55% (SD 18%) vs 52% (SD 22%), p < 0.001), after adjusting for number of items, lower accuracy was associated with persistent use (OR 0.93 [95% CI 0.90-0.97], p < 0.01). Conclusions: Our study of a large sample of U.S. medical students illustrates big data medical education research and provides guidance for improving implementation of ALPs and further investigation.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. It has become increasingly important to address the challenge of incorporating social and behavioral sciences (SBS) into medical curricula. This commentary describes how the use of patient videos can be used to overcome barriers in teaching of SBS in non-clinical settings, and enhance recall and foster humanism in medical students. Recommendations are also provided in both creating and identifying optimal patient videos to incorporate into classrooms.

Objectives: This study seeks to validate the use of activity monitors to detect and record gait abnormalities, potentially identifying patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) prior to the onset of cognitive or urinary symptoms. Methods: This study compared the step counts of four common activity monitors (Omron Step Counter HJ-113, New Lifestyles 2000, Nike Fuelband, and Fitbit Ultra) to an observed step count in 17 patients with confirmed iNPH. Results: Of the four devices, the Fitbit Ultra (Fitbit, Inc., San Francisco, CA) provided the most accurate step count. The correlation with the observed step count was significantly higher (p<0.009) for the Fitbit Ultra than for any of the other three devices. Conclusions: These preliminary findings suggest that existing activity monitors have variable efficacy in the iNPH patient population and that the MEMS tri-axial accelerometer and algorithm of the Fitbit Ultra provides the most accurate gait measurements of the four devices tested.

Formative assessment has been shown to improve medical student performance and retention, but many learners lack access to formative assessments because faculty members have limited time to create such resources, and acquiring existing commercial review banks is expensive. In response, we developed a collaborative learning platform for medical student self-assessment called Osmosis ( http://osmosis.org/ ). Osmosis is a web- and mobile-learning platform that provides free access to thousands of crowd-sourced, high-yield practice questions and explanations. The quality of these questions and resources is enhanced through a unique social rating and commenting feature. During the first year Osmosis was launched at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in January 2012, approximately 250 students in the first and second year classes spent over 2,400 hours answering more than 5,000 questions close to half-a-million times (∼2,000 questions answered/student). In addition, over 1,000 Creative Commons-licensed images and YouTube videos have been shared. Usage data and reception by students indicate that the platform fits well into busy schedules and that participants value its role in promoting collaboration and self-assessing knowledge gaps. We are currently developing additional features for the Osmosis platform related to knowledge retention and curricular design. Since the vast majority of questions and resources on Osmosis are shared under non-restrictive licenses, such as Creative Commons, we are making Osmosis available to peer institutions. It is our hope that more students and faculty members will benefit from, and contribute to, the Osmosis library.