Online or on-campus? Analysing the effects of financial education on student knowledge gain

This paper describes the results of an experiment conducted in a technical university in Italy in 2019, involving the implementation and evaluation of an innovative short course on financial education. The programme applied a novel approach based on online learning and its effectiveness is compared against the effects of a traditional on-campus lecture, within an experimental setting. The findings indicate that the programme is effective: one week after taking the course, the students improved their pre-course test scores by about 4 points out of 10. No statistically significant difference in gains is found between students assigned to the online vs the on-campus mode of learning, suggesting a potential positive role of digital learning in this specific setting. An exploratory analysis of factors associated with the outcome reveal that the course has been particularly beneficial for those students initially less interested in finance.

Creating a 'choose your topic' massive open online course: an innovative and flexible approach to delivering injury prevention education

BACKGROUND

A pediatric injury prevention course has not been available as a massive open online course (MOOC). Creating a comprehensive topic course is particularly challenging because the traditional, week-by-week linear curriculum design is often a barrier to learners interested in only specific topics. We created a novel, flexible course as both a 'choose your topic' MOOC for the public learner and a Small Private Online Course (SPOC) for medical students.

METHODS

We describe creating 'Injury Prevention for Children and Teens', a course of 59 video learning segments within eight modules taught by a multidisciplinary panel of 25 nationally-recognized experts. Completion tracking and course evaluations were collected.

RESULTS

In 2.5 years, 4,822 learners from 148 countries have enrolled. Two-thirds of learners were female. Median age of learners was 31 years. For engagement, 19.3% (n = 932) of learners attempted quizzes, and 5.2% (n = 252) participated in online forum discussions. Medical professionals (n = 162) claimed an average of 13 credit hours per learner. Over 200 senior medical students have taken the SPOC.

CONCLUSION

'Injury Prevention for Children and Teens' is a novel approach to injury prevention education that is broad, science-based, accessible, and not cost-prohibitive for a diverse group of global learners.

The comparison of teaching efficiency between massive open online courses and traditional courses in medicine education: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background

This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to investigate and compare the passing rates of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with Traditional Courses to indicate how to improve the teaching efficiency in Medicine Education.

Methods

A systematic search of relevant published literature was conducted to collect relevant retrospective cohort studies that compared the teaching efficiency of MOOCs and Traditional Courses.

Results

There are three retrospective cohort studies included in the final meta-analysis. There were no significant differences in the passing rates of MOOCs and Traditional Courses.

Conclusions

it is necessary for universities to invest in online education to promote the development of MOOCs, which will probably have an advantage over Traditional Courses for postgraduate medical education in the near future.

[Backstage of a massive open online course (MOOC) on cancer diagnosis]

Massive open online course (or MOOC) is a new online and open access teaching approach aimed at unlimited participation and providing interactions among students and teaching staff. These academic courses, often still free, lead to the delivery of a certificate of attendance and could soon also deliver a diploma. The MOOC "Stratégies diagnostiques des cancers" will be hosted in autumn 2016 on the platform "France Université Numérique" and will have two levels of learners: students in the field of health and biology and the general public. This MOOC will also be integrated into the teaching program of medical students of Paris Diderot University and Paris 13 University. The educational objective of this MOOC is to convey to all participants an overview of the diagnostic steps of cancers and of the various medical specialties involved in this diagnosis. The second week of the MOOC, entitled "tumor samples, macroscopic and microscopic analysis", presents the pathology specialty with the technical treatment of tissue or cell samples and the basic elements of the tissue section analysis to get a diagnosis of benign or malignant tumor. After this MOOC, it is planned to assess the impact of this new modality of teaching the pathology specialty or pathology, especially by the general public.