[Providing practical skills in curricular teaching-effect of SkillsLab and flipped classroom]. / Vermittlung praktischer Fähigkeiten in der curricularen Lehre ­ Effekt von SkillsLab und "flipped classroom".

BACKGROUND: In the course of the restructuring of medical studies, practical competencies are clearly defined as learning objectives for the first time. In order to make most effective use of the short attendance time available in otolaryngology, the aim of this study was to teach practical skills with the help of flipped classroom, digital teaching, and a newly established SkillsLab. MATERIALS AND METHODS: During their ENT internship, two groups of students-group A = 93 students (male n = 42, female n = 51) and group B = 113 students (male n = 42, female n = 71)-first worked through material provided online, which explained the individual examinations. This was followed by face-to-face teaching, which consisted of observation and practical exercise of the different examination techniques. While group A practiced on each other or on dummies, group B used structured workstations in the ENT SkillsLab, which was newly built for this purpose. The effects on motivation and subjective competence were measured using a questionnaire developed for this study. RESULTS: After working through the online material, both groups showed a high level of motivation and competence. On the day of face-to-face teaching, there was a gain in motivation and competence, which was statistically significant only in the SkillsLab group (p < 0.001). Although the SkillsLab group was inferior in terms of its subjective competence at the beginning, it was superior to the other group after the face-to-face teaching. CONCLUSION: Combination of digitized teaching in the flipped classroom with structured workstations in the setting of a SkillsLab enables more effective teaching of practical skills, which was reflected by increases in motivation and subjective competence in group B. In particular, the presentation of all collected findings on monitors allows verification of learning success and stimulates discussion.

Fast-track flipping: flipped classroom framework development with open-source H5P interactive tools.

BACKGROUND: The availability and popularity of laptops, tablet PCs and smartphones in private and work environments offers considerable potential for reasonably integrating blended learning formats into structured medical learning environments. The promising educational principle of the flipped classroom (FC) provides the opportunity to effectively combine e-learning and face-to-face teaching within a single framework. However, similar to most blended learning formats, the FC requires a solid groundwork of structured digitized learning content. As rearranging a whole curriculum is intense and time consuming, physicians occupied simultaneously in clinical practice and teaching may be confronted with a lack of time during this process. METHODS: We developed two straightforward approaches to transforming a pre-existing, lecture-based otolaryngology curriculum into interactive videos within a Moodle learning management system. Special attention was given to reducing individual working time for medical professionals. Thus, while one approach was mainly guided by a medical professional to control the content-related quality of video processing, we investigated an alternative approach outsourcing work to a technician. Afterwards, the working time was analysed and compared. The resulting videos were revised with the H5P plugin for moodle to adjust the content where necessary. RESULTS: We identified a fast-track approach for creating structured e-learning content suitable for flipped-classroom-based lectures, other blended learning formats, or even providing a whole curriculum online. The alternative approach significantly reduced working time for medical professionals but did not impair the content-related quality significantly. CONCLUSIONS: The use of H5P interactive tools via Moodle LMS provides a major procedural benefit by allowing the easy adjustment of pre-existing video material into suitable online content. Reasonably outsourcing work to technicians can significantly reduce the working time of medical professionals without decreasing the quality of learning content. The presented workflow can be used as a flexible approach for flipped classroom frameworks or other blended learning strategies where interactive videos are applicable.

Correlating 3D morphology with molecular pathology: fibrotic remodelling in human lung biopsies.

Assessing alterations of the parenchymal architecture is essential in understanding fibrosing interstitial lung diseases. Here, we present a novel method to visualise fibrotic remodelling in human lungs and correlate morphological three-dimensional (3D) data with gene and protein expression in the very same sample. The key to our approach is a novel embedding resin that clears samples to full optical transparency and simultaneously allows 3D laser tomography and preparation of sections for histology, immunohistochemistry and RNA isolation. Correlating 3D laser tomography with molecular diagnostic techniques enables new insights into lung diseases. This approach has great potential to become an essential tool in pulmonary research.