WHEN ALL LEARNERS WENT ONLINE: ENHANCING AN ONCOLOGY EDUCATION WEBSITE WITH THE ADDITION OF ASSESSMENT TO INFORM EVALUATION

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Cancer is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed world, yet gaps are identified in all levels of medical education. Learnoncology is an online resource originally developed to function as a standardized resource for medical students based on the Canadian oncology objectives. It has since expanded to reach 169 countries and multiple health professional programs. Learnoncology was created using Kern's framework for curriculum development. It features multiple instructional modalities including modules, YouTube videos, podcasts, and virtual patients. COVID-19 has presented an opportunity to seek novel avenues which further expand our impact. To date, evaluation of the website has focused on Kirkpatrick's Evaluation hierarchy user satisfaction. Recently, self-assessment in the form of a quiz bank was added to evaluate knowledge acquisition. A description of assessment method use was undertaken to evaluate the website and inform future development. Materials and Methods: Between March 15, 2020 to June 30, 2020, 31 multiple choice assessments, consisting of over 300 questions were written to complement national oncology objectives and content on Learnoncology. Quizzes were developed by medical students, reviewed by practicing oncologists and hosted on Learnoncology. Users are provided with formative feedback in the form of written explanations and asked to complete a brief evaluation. The assessment module was added to the website in July 2020. Results: Between July 2020 and February 2021 the quizzes were attempted 2143 times. Most commonly accessed topics included common cancers such as breast and prostate, as well as fundamental principles of oncology. User feedback indicates that quizzes are overall appropriate, with some users requesting more high level content and incorporation of pictures. The most common user type is medical students at 47.7%, but there has been an increasing number of other healthcare professionals including nurses and resident physicians. The average score across the most heavily utilized quizzes is 71.5%, indicating good knowledge acquisition of fundamental and common oncology topics. Conclusions: As with most educational projects, Learnoncology initially focused on the development of education content with only preliminary evaluation metrics. With increasing online teaching in medical schools due to COVID-19 there is a need to continually improve online resources. The development of an assessment module will allow for enhanced evaluation of this learning tool and may inform similar projects. Further, while Learnoncology was initially created to target medical school goals and objectives, our quiz data shows that a much broader audience is utilizing the website to learn oncology principles.