Journal of Medical Education
Volume:15 Issue: 3, Aug 2016

Background and The first step in educational planning is identification of educational needs. The increasing scientific movement, information explosion and technology development, especially in Medical Sciences remind the need to empower faculty members as specialized human power. In this regard, in this study initially a valid and reliable tool was designed to investigate educational needs of faculty members of basic sciences of IUMS faculty of Medicine to determine their educational needs and priorities to be considered in faculty development programs.
In this cross-sectional study, after reviewing the literature and job description of faculty members proposed by Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education, an initial questionnaire including 3 parts and 76 questions was designed. In order to confirm face and content validity, the questionnaire was distributed among medical education experts (n=10). Then, it was revised accordingly and the final version including 3 parts and 68 questions was developed and distributed among the study participants (n=30) to confirm reliability. Afterwards, the final version was distributed among all the study participants to assess their educational needs.
Face and content validity and reliability (Cronbach's alpha of 0.9) of the questionnaire were confirmed. The educational needs of faculty members of basic sciences were as follows: educational technology skills (3.72±0.16), student learning and development skills (3.37±0.16), educational softwares application (3.19±0.13), curriculum and educational planning, teaching and class management skills (3.09± 0.12), assessment and evaluation skills (3.05±0.13), and scientific writing skills (2.67±0.15). The mean average calculated for all the skills was 3.1±1.1 that indicates the need for professional development.
No significant relationship was found between age, gender, education, work experience, employment status, educational department, and educational needs of the study participants; however, a significant relationship was found between their academic rank and educational needs. The results indicate that instructors declared the highest educational needs to 4 areas of class management, curriculum and educational planning, scientific writing skills and assessment and evaluation skills; while, professors declared the lowest educational need to the mentioned areas. In addition, oral and face to face workshop presentation (58.1 percent), morning to noon presentation time (85.3 percent), emails for communication (40.3 percent), and blended teaching (35.5 percent) were considered as the most appropriate.
The results of this study show that faculty members need all aforementioned skills, especially in educational technology. At last, to consider their educational needs and priorities in planning and implementation of faculty development programs is recommended.

Background and The first step in educational planning is identification of educational needs. The increasing scientific movement, information explosion and technology development, especially in Medical Sciences remind the need to empower faculty members as specialized human power. In this regard, in this study initially a valid and reliable tool was designed to investigate educational needs of faculty members of basic sciences of IUMS faculty of Medicine to determine their educational needs and priorities to be considered in faculty development programs.
In this cross-sectional study, after reviewing the literature and job description of faculty members proposed by Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education, an initial questionnaire including 3 parts and 76 questions was designed. In order to confirm face and content validity, the questionnaire was distributed among medical education experts (n=10). Then, it was revised accordingly and the final version including 3 parts and 68 questions was developed and distributed among the study participants (n=30) to confirm reliability. Afterwards, the final version was distributed among all the study participants to assess their educational needs.
Face and content validity and reliability (Cronbach's alpha of 0.9) of the questionnaire were confirmed. The educational needs of faculty members of basic sciences were as follows: educational technology skills (3.72±0.16), student learning and development skills (3.37±0.16), educational softwares application (3.19±0.13), curriculum and educational planning, teaching and class management skills (3.09± 0.12), assessment and evaluation skills (3.05±0.13), and scientific writing skills (2.67±0.15). The mean average calculated for all the skills was 3.1±1.1 that indicates the need for professional development.
No significant relationship was found between age, gender, education, work experience, employment status, educational department, and educational needs of the study participants; however, a significant relationship was found between their academic rank and educational needs. The results indicate that instructors declared the highest educational needs to 4 areas of class management, curriculum and educational planning, scientific writing skills and assessment and evaluation skills; while, professors declared the lowest educational need to the mentioned areas. In addition, oral and face to face workshop presentation (58.1 percent), morning to noon presentation time (85.3 percent), emails for communication (40.3 percent), and blended teaching (35.5 percent) were considered as the most appropriate.
The results of this study show that faculty members need all aforementioned skills, especially in educational technology. At last, to consider their educational needs and priorities in planning and implementation of faculty development programs is recommended.

Background and Undoubtedly, social networks are being used extensively and are the most important communicative tool among students, especially at higher levels of education. We aimed to investigate the effect of social networks on education and academic learning.
This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 32 nursing students who were taking the cancer nursing course at Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences during 2015. The students were randomly and equally divided into two groups. The students in the case group established a group in Viber social network and shared the academic materials related to the presented course in addition to receiving information in the classroom. At the end of the semester, they were evaluated through a test and a questionnaire. The obtained data were analyzed by SPSS-18 software using t-test and Kolmogrov-Smirnov test. P The findings showed that 20 (93.8%) students suggested the use of social networks for better understanding of the course materials and 27 (81.8%) students believed that social networks were useful. We found a statistically significant difference between the case (15.79±2.13) and control (13.84±2.02) groups in terms of the mean score of cancer nursing (P=0.013).
The results revealed that the academic achievement scores in the case group were significantly higher than those of the control group. Hence, they can be recommended as a teaching tool taking into account different aspects of social networks.

Background and Biochemistry is extremely difficult in preclinical medical education because of the monotonous use of lectures, tutorials, practical and end of semester load with end of semester examination. Although several studies have been carried out on learning biochemistry in Europe and America, Asian studies are very few and literature in the Sri Lankan context is lacking. We aimed to assess the best teaching tool for teaching Biochemistry in Medical Faculty is the main objective of this study.
In this study, 177 second-year medical students of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Rajarata, Sri Lanka were enrolled. Using a self-administrated method, two non-compulsory evaluating questions were given to the candidates when they sat for the Objective Structured Practical Examination (OSPE) in 2nd MBBS.
The students gave high positive ratings to the lectures. The preferred order of the teaching method included lectures followed by student-staff interaction, panel discussion and the least preference was seminar.
The findings of our study highlight the large gap between lectures and seminars in teaching biochemistry. In light of these questions, we discussed and recommended alternative approaches to teach using a hybrid method. Sri Lankan medical faculty will need to make an effort to change this learning attitude by improving proper teaching methods in biochemistry.

Background and There are 3 specific reasons for education evaluation: to justify the existence and budget of the training department by showing how it contributes to the organization’s objectives and goals, to decide whether to continue or discontinue training programs, and to gain information on how to improve future training programs. We aimed to assess the effectiveness a media production workshop during 2014.
In this quasi-experimental study a workshop related to producing media was evaluated among the health department staff of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences based on Kirkpatrick's model. Data were collected through DREEM questionnaire and analyzed using SPSS software, version 17.
In the reaction level, the mean±SD obtained from the learner’s perception of educational environment was 144.92±22.53. The mean±SD scores of learner’s perception of learning, learner’s perception of course teachers, learner’s academic self-perception, learner’s perceptions of atmosphere, and learner’s social self perceptions were 29.61±4.87, 33.61±4.78, 21.84±3.71, 36.38±7.07, and 20.15±3.13, respectively.
In the reaction level, the correlation between the scales of the learner’s perception of educational environment showed that better learning can be provided with minimal changes in each of the scales. The results of correlation between the reaction to the learning level showed that the learner’s perception of teacher compared with other scales has an important role in raising awareness. Kirkpatrick evaluation framework, confirms the success of the workshop at the level of reaction and learning. Future studies using case and control groups are recommended to achieve better results.

Background and ConsideringBackground and Considering the importance and necessity of competency-based education at a global level and with respect to globalization and the requirement of minimum competencies in medical fields, medical education communities and organizations worldwide have tried to determine the competencies, present frameworks and education models to respond to be sure of the ability of all graduates. In the literature, we observed numerous competency development models that refer to the same issues with different terminologies. It seems that evaluation and synthesis of all these models can finally result in designing a comprehensive meta-model for competency development.
Meta-ethnography is a useful method for synthesis of qualitative research that is used to develop models that interpret the results in several studies. Considering that the aim of this study is to ultimately provide a competency development meta-model, in the previous section of the study, the literature review was conducted to achieve competency development models. Models obtained through the search were studied in details, and the key concepts of the models and overarching concepts were extracted in this section, models’ concepts were reciprocally translated and the available competency development models were synthesized.
A presentation of the competency development meta-model and providing a redefinition of the Dreyfus brothers model.
Given the importance of competency-based education at a global level and the need to review curricula and competency-based curriculum design, it is required to provide competency development as well as meta-model to be the basis for curriculum development. As there are a variety of competency development models available, in this study, it was tried to develop the curriculum using them.

Background and To investigate how much the method of observation agrees with a standardised review of evidence of clinical examination, for the assessment of clinical otoscopic competence.
65 medical students took part in an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) station using patients with real pathology. Examiners assessed otoscopic competency in tympanic membrane examination solely by distant observation. An external examiner later reviewed candidates’ documented findings on a schematic drawing of the tympanic membranes. Observed agreement of the two methods and Cohen’s kappa coefficient were calculated.
Mean otoscopy scores for examiner 1 and examiner 2 were 67.7% and 29.4% respectively. There was a significant difference using the Mann-Whitney U-test. OSCE observation declared 47.7% of candidates (31/65) to be clinically competent. Drawing-based analysis however deemed only 4.6% (3/65) to have achieved this competency. This represented more than a ten-fold overestimation of clinical competency by OSCE assessment. Observed agreement between assessment methods was 59.6%. Cohen’s kappa coefficient was 0.1.
OSCE observational assessment of otoscopic clinical competency correlates poorly with review of evidence from clinical examination. If evidence review is acceptable as a better marker for competency, observation should not to be used alone in OSCE assessment. Evidence review itself is vulnerable to candidate guesswork. OSCE could possibly explore candidate demonstration with explanation of findings, by use of digital otoscopy offering a shared view of the tympanic membranes, as an improved standard of clinical competency assessment.