Use of a Multimodal, Peer-to-Peer Learning Management System for Introduction of Critical Clinical Thinking to First-Year Veterinary Students.

Veterinary medical students need multiple thinking strategies, particularly critical thinking. We used a multimedia, peer review learning management system (CGScholar) to introduce a series of complex, realistic, case-based e-learning modules to help introduce critical thinking to 422 first-year veterinary students through instructor-designed clinical cases. Students developed and published on the CGScholar platform an analysis of a case and conducted anonymous peer reviews of each other's drafts. Instructors selected desirable characteristics of a student's activity to track and provide automatic feedback to students via an analytics dashboard and aster plot that allowed visualization of progress. The dashboard also enabled instructors to view the entire class's performance, highlighting students whose performance was lagging. Online interactions were supplemented by case-specific face-to-face workshop sessions. Our goal was to address the following questions: Does the addition of multimedia to a work (one's own or others') enhance people's ability to understand and convey the material? Does peer review (of one's own and others' work) lead to improvements in the writer's own work? Does the peer review process enhance the writer's understanding of what constitutes high-quality literature evidence? An anonymous student survey showed that experience was significantly more positive in the second and third year of implementation after inclusion of explicit guidance on the use of the rubric for peer review. Overall, 67% of students thought inclusion of multimedia enhanced their ability to communicate and 52% agreed multimedia enhanced their ability to understand their peers' analyses, but students were split on benefits to their understanding of high-quality literature.

Hearing aids for Ménière's syndrome: implications of hearing fluctuation.

BACKGROUND: Hearing fluctuation imposes the biggest challenge in the fitting of hearing aids for patients with Ménière's syndrome. PURPOSE: This study shows that the problem maybe be overcome by allowing the patients to test their own hearing and to program their own hearing aids to adjust for hearing fluctuation. RESEARCH DESIGN AND STUDY SAMPLE: A group of 40 participants diagnosed with Ménère's syndrome were fitted with Widex Senso Diva hearing aids and were provided with a portable Senso Programmer 3 (SP3) that allowed them to measure their own hearing thresholds at up to 14 different frequencies and to program their own devices. INTERVENTION: The participants were instructed to test their hearing three times a day for 8 weeks and to program their hearing aids according to the measured thresholds. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: All participants recorded some degree of hearing fluctuation during the 8-week trial. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Among participants, 70 percent continued to program their hearing aids on a regular basis and reported great satisfaction with amplification because they are now able to adjust their own devices when their hearing fluctuates.