openlabyrinth.ca

The Script Concordance approach to testing clinical reasoning was developed in Montreal a number of years ago. (www.cpass.umontreal.ca/sct.html) It is based on the premise that experts follow pre-built mental scripts in solving problems. The testing aspect compares a learner’s performance on a series of decisions to see how concordant they are with the decisions made by a panel of experts.

The approach is well developed with very good evidence behind it but not yet widely used. We are exploring some key factors around this and whether our OpenLabyrinth virtual patients might be adapted to a Script Concordance approach. One of the key points in decision making is that all the choices should be reasonable options. This is in contrast with the classic MCQ style best-of-five where only one choice is right, and the question writer has to create credible distractors that are still not correct. In SCT, all choices are potentially correct.

This aligns nicely with the style that we use in our more effective cases. Create a case where all the branch options are reasonable and realistic. So now we are looking at improving some of the interactive tools available within OpenLabyrinth in order to better support the Script Concordance approach to learning and assessment.

We are part way into a project where the learning designs will be based on SCT. We are also exploring what could be done in extending this approach, afforded by the increased flexibility in how we present data and ask for decisions and rankings.

More on this to come soon.

At the Canadian Conference on Medical Education #ccme13 this weekend, there was lots of interest in what has been happening with OpenLabyrinth v3 over the past few months. Some nice new collaborative activities arose out of this as well.

Just before launch, one of our development teams at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, added semantic indexing capacity to OLab3, which really opens up the discoverability of case material on an OLab3 VP server. Lazaros and his team have done some really nice work there – more on this shortly. This generated quite a bit of discussion in both technical and clinical author groups. Powerful stuff.

Also some useful discussions with groups who are looking at ways to connect OLab3 with other educational resources such as Moodle. At the moment, it looks like the IMS-LTI approach holds the most promise here. We will be working on a spec to insert the LTI Provider Layer within the OLab3 code base. For those who are less technically inclined, this basically means that we will be able to integrate OLab3 into other educational resources and systems in a much more seamless manner. Gone are the days when a virtual patient engine could be entirely standalone.

OLab3 featured in several workshops and presentations. The new Visual Editor interface was well received by both clinical and technical authors. Nice and easy to use – the concept mapping approach seems to be a nice intuitive approach and provides much more power and flexibility than a simple fill in the blanks linear model.

It is clear that most clinical authors need more in the way of examples and how-to cases in order to move them further towards creating decision branch points in their cases that are truly challenging and thoughtful – this is not a technical issue. It is a faculty development issue around basic teaching/learning principles. More examples coming soon.

So lots of development work to go and lots of ideas coming in. Let us know if there are particular aspects of OLab3 that you would like enhanced or strengthened.

This weekend we are officially launching OpenLabyrinth v3 at the Canadian Conference on Medical Education in Quebec City.

Our main case site is at http://vp.openlabyrinth.ca

For those of you who have been following along with the progress on OpenLabyrinth v3, you will have seen that we have a number of servers already running OLab3 code and cases.

OLab3 is an ongoing open-source project, still under lively development. This is a signficant milestone for us this weekend, but you will see continuing changes to this platform over the coming months as we build in more capacity and useful features.

For a peek at the latest examples of what can be done with beta code, check out http://demo.openlabyrinth.ca

Now is a good time to give us feedback or to put ideas into our heads for wish-list features. Of course, we cannot accommodate all of these but nevertheless, all ideas are welcome, big and small.

We have created a simple list/directory of example cases that can be played in OpenLabyrinth v3. This is not an all encompassing list of cases out there – there are hundreds! These examples show a variety of styles and learning designs.

Sorry about the long and horrible URL. We put them on Google Docs for now so that you can search for various criteria, parameters etc. At some point, we need a better way to show and describe these cases on http://openlabyrinth.ca/ – but I want to make that list tied to underlying data so that we are not duplicating work etc.

Some of this will tie into what we are doing with mEducator2 semantic linking, but we still want a simpler way to linking such a table to underlying case metadata.

In part this also relates to some upcoming work, linking OLab3 to other systems such as Entrada, Moodle, Git wiki or Atlassian Confluence, through IMS-LTI and other mechanisms.

We have significantly rewritten the User Guide for OLab3. In this, you will find tons of new resources and improved features.

• Visual Editor – details on cool new features
• Powerful MCQ and other styles of Questions
• Conditional rules and logic syntax

Check out our main case repository at http://vp.openlabyrinth.ca/ but for the latest OLab3 code features, see http://demo.openlabyrinth.ca/