INTEGRATING SMART CLASSROOM IN MEDICAL EDUCATION Dr. Ahmed. I. Albarrak, Head, Medical Informatics Unit Chair of public health and epidemiology College of Medicine, KSU, Riyadh, KSA
[email protected] Abstract Students' interaction plays a main role in medical education by allowing them to participate in discussions, clinical examinations and procedures, giving them the chance of gaining experience and constructing new medical skills. Interaction is applied in King Saud University, College of Medicine through blended learning approach where technological tools augment traditional teaching methods and improve learning efficiency. Smart classrooms are an important part of a blended learning Introduction For ages, Education has been centered on attending classes day after day, listening to a lecturer who provides the necessary information, and going through exams to assess students' knowledge. Education focused on the material itself rather than "learners" and the differences between their capabilities and learning skills [1]. Instructors had to depend on their teaching skills and were only capable of using limited illustration techniques which were rigid and did not help in delivering information to students. In medical education, students were not able to securely utilize patient
environment since they allow students to attend remote lectures, live or recoded surgeries and procedures, and examine patients’ medical history and radiology studies. This paper discusses how smart classrooms are designed and implemented in college of Medicine, King Saud University. It describes the technologies implemented in these classrooms, as well as the benefits obtained from implementing smart classrooms as a part of the blended learning approach that is adopted by the College of Medicine.
medical data as part of the clinical educational process; they were not able to compare patient’s radiology images. Operation rooms and critical areas (e.g. ICU) have limited space, so only small numbers of students were able to attend and benefit from educational surgeries and procedures to learn these skills and gain experience.
The continuous and rapid advancement in information technology and communications led to the evolution of verities of e-learning approaches. E-learning systems are educational systems that utilize information
technology and communications resources such as the Internet, networking, and multimedia applications to enhance the learning process. There are various approaches to implement e-learning systems including, distant learning which enables students in different continents to obtain graduate and post graduate degrees. E-learning systems can also be used in conjunction with traditional learning (blended or integrated learning) [2] to expand the resources available for students, and help them focus on their learning objectives.
to the public. The university academic environment encourages students to do research, and to provide them with the necessary tools like skill labs, and anatomy and physiology software packages. This study discusses the smart classroom design KSUHS have adopted to implement blended approach. KSUHS implemented this approach by adapting smart classrooms to fulfill the practical needs of medical students.
Overview of smart classrooms This form of e-learning (blended learning) was designed and adopted by the College of Medicine, King Saud University (KSU) to provide medical students with the highest degree of traditional learning along with the resources to improve their skills and allow them to gain experience that can only be gained through examination and practice in an effective, interactive and integrated way. Introduction to King Saud University Hospitals (KSUHS) KSUHS represent the College of Medicine, Dental College, King Khaled University Hospital (KKUH), King Abdulaziz University Hospital (KAUH), and King Fahd Cardiology Center (KFCC). The number of students in these colleges is over two thousands, and the number of college staff is over four hundred. The infra-structure in KSU consists of a 100 Mbps intranet connecting the campus colleges and KKUH together, and a 32 Mbps microwave link connecting the campus to KAUH. The main functions of these hospitals are education, medical research, and providing medical services
Smart classrooms can be described in terms of “smart spaces” which are work environments with embedded computers, information appliances, and multi-modal sensors allowing people to perform tasks efficiently by offering unprecedented levels of access to information and assistance from computers [3] [4]. Smart classrooms in education typically contains a smart board enabling the instructor to load presentations and lectures to the board using his/her laptop, writing notes and explanations on the slides, then distributing it to the students. Using smart boards saves the time of the instructor and enables the students to focus on understanding the material and making their own notes instead of having to write everything for later study. Smart classrooms also contain a controlled lighting system to adjust the lights, a sound system, a projector, a document camera, a computer to facilitate the different data management operations in the classroom, and a smart lectern which enables the instructor to control
everything in the classroom in a simple manner [5].
Smart classrooms in KSUHS In medical education, Enabling the students to practice medicine, handle live cases, and take part in the examination, procedures and diagnosis processes is essential and of great importance in order to supply them with the necessary skills and experience to treat their patients. Traditionally, this was done by organizing student rounds where small groups of students try to attend and examine cases, and discuss patient’s condition with their doctors, and by attending educational surgeries and operation room activities. This traditional way had the disadvantages of: Enabling only a small number of students to study each case which only enable students to attend a limited number of cases during their study. This also applies for the limited number of surgeries students can attend. The limited capability of the students to examine patient history and radiology images. Traditional learning enables them to examine only a small subset of patient data and images which limits the skills and experience gained by students. In order to overcome the disadvantages of traditional teaching activities, KSUHS designed and implemented a new approach in which traditional teaching is supported by technological tools to enhance the experience gained by medical students.
Besides the equipment described in the previous section, KHUHS smart class rooms also contain: Large high resolution monitors to enable students to view surgeries and cases live through cameras in examination rooms and operation rooms. Video conferencing equipment to enable students to attend lectures from anywhere in the campus or even at later time. In addition to the powerful integration process which brings in an automated and simple way different information systems into the class rooms. Integration of these systems to the smart rooms includes the hospital information system (HIS), radiology information system (RIS), cardiology information system (CIS), and picture archiving and communication system (PACS). The integration of these systems in the smart classroom enable the students to get a complete picture of every case they examine, they are able to check the patients’ history, their radiology images and medical reports, while at the same time viewing the case live and interacting with the patient and his treating doctor. When this approach is integrated with the traditional approach in which students meet face to face in classroom and with patients in clinics, which create an effective and interactive environment providing students with tools needed to acquire knowledge and experience in patient examination, diagnosis and treatment. In addition to enabling students to communicate with other universities and medical institutes through video conferencing,
exchange experience with them and understand new approaches in medicine. Developing the technology to implement smart classrooms In order to build such integrated classrooms, various technologies had to be implemented, and integrated. Video conferencing was fully integrated with the material being presented by the instructor in order to allow remote students to gain access to all class material and activities. Several approaches are available reach this integration; Hardware codecs from a known and standardized vendor (e.g. Tandberg, Polycom), and use the vendor’s proprietary software to integrate video conferencing with lecture materials. This approach has the advantage of having a reliable hardware codec for video conferencing along with tested tools for lecture sharing. However, it had disadvantages including the high cost for using hardware codecs in every classroom, in addition, software provided with hardware codecs supports a subset of the lecture material and not all material formats. Software codec can be used to integrate for sharing lecture materials with the software codecs built in video conferencing. This approach has the advantage of allowing seamless integration between the video conferencing and the lecture sharing software. Using a software codec also has the benefit of reducing the total cost of ownership because it is
cheaper and easier to maintain than hardware codecs. This software was developed especially for e-learning applications and thus it support all lecture material format. However, this approach had the disadvantages of forcing the use of a specific codec that must be purchased for any new classroom, and software codecs are less efficient than hardware codecs. Software codecs also have a limited capability to take part in video conferences in which external parties are involved. To utilize the advantages of both approaches a new design was developed where software and hardware codecs are integrated together. Software codecs were installed in every classroom to utilize their lecture sharing capabilities, and at the same time hardware codecs were used as gateway to enable video conferencing with external parties at a superior quality. This new approach presented an interactive and flexible way for the students to attend lectures remotely. Allowing the main activities and content of lectures to be stored for later review, was implemented by using video on demand (VOD) servers with five terabytes of storage, allowing the storage of over ten thousand hours of lectures, procedures and surgeries. Load balancing was used to guarantee 99% up time for the servers and provide the students with the lecture materials at all time. To provide the students with data from different information systems (HIS, RIS, PACS…), HL7 and DICOM standards
[6] had to be used as an interface between the different systems providing a standardized interface to transfer data from one system to another. Finally, integration of all these systems in the classroom, providing instructors with an easy to use interface to allow them to concentrate on the educational process rather than concentrating on using the different applications was a major challenge. This challenge was overcome by first using advanced technologies in control systems allowing instructors to control every device in the classroom with a single touch, and second by providing them with extensive training on how to use this system and continues help and support. Figure 1 shows the integrated elements of smart classroom, and how software and hardware codecs are used together allowing communications with internal and external parties.
Interaction plays an important role in medical education. It enhances the students’ capabilities and allows them to get involved in medical process, as a way of building skills and gaining experience. This interaction is best used through blended approach. Smart classrooms are an important component of blended e-learning approach, providing students with an effective, integrated learning environment with the highest possible quality. In medical education, smart classrooms are even of greater importance because of their role in overcoming problems such as the insufficient space in operation rooms and critical areas allowing the students to attend procedures and surgeries without endangering patients’ safety and security. KSUHS developed and adopted a smart classroom system where all hospital systems integrate in a smart technological environment to support and augment traditional education by providing instructors with easy to use tools enabling them to concentrate on delivering high quality education and at the same time providing students with a complete picture of every case they study, increasing the quality of the education and allowing students to be fully interactive with the diagnosis and examination procedures.
References Figure 1: Integrated smart classroom elements and communications Conclusion
[1] Chen, Kinshuk, Wang; "Cyber Schooling Framework: Improving Mobility and Situated Learning"; Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies; Taiwan, 2005.
[2] Hayashi; Tominaga; Yamasaki; "Blended learning contents for university education"; The 7th International conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, 2006. [3] Shi Y.C., Xie W.K., Xu G.Y.: “Smart Remote Classroom: Creating a Revolutionary Real-time Interactive Distance Learning System”, Proceedings of International Conference on Webbased Learning 2002, Springer LNCS 2436, p.130. [4] http://www.nist.gov/smartspace. [5] Davar Pishva; “Smart Classrooms Bring top-quality Education around the Globe”; Proceedings of the 2007 International Symposiumon Applications and the Internet Workshops (SAINTW'07). [6] http://medical.nema.org/
