Biomedical subjects

Firas H Wehbe

Publications and source records attributed to Firas H Wehbe.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

How students and faculty interact with a searchable online database of the medical curriculum.

Many medical schools currently provide electronic access to their medical curriculum. In order to better develop and evaluate online curricular databases, knowledge of the interaction of students and faculty with such systems is required. The KnowledeMap application provides a web interface for students, faculty and administrators to perform NLP-assisted searches for documents from the entire medical curriculum. The pilot implementation of KM in a first year anatomy course was evaluated. Data was collected from the web-server log files over two years, a paper survey at the end of the course, and structured interviews with students and faculty members. The data showed complete adoption of KM. Analysis of usage patterns showed that most of the students chose to browse for current course material rather than to search for related medical concepts in future courses. Analysis of the interviews identified key concepts relating to the students' utilization of KM for their learning tasks. The impact of KM on medical pedagogy is discussed in light of our results.

Anatomy↗

PubMed2005

Can users estimate their usage of a web-based application? Validating a self-report usage questionnaire.

User surveys are often used to estimate usage of online systems. We asked medical student to estimate their weekly use of KnowledgeMap, an online medical education system, during the previous semester. The information was validated against server log files. The average number of log-on days was significantly different across four categories of self-reported use. Self-reported frequency scales may be used to correctly segregate users into discrete ordinal usage groups.

Curriculum↗

PubMed2003

The KnowledgeMap project: development of a concept-based medical school curriculum database.

We developed the KnowledgeMap (KM) system as an online, concept-based database of medical school curriculum documents. It uses the KM concept indexer to map full-text documents and match search queries to concepts in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). In this paper, we describe the design of KM and report the first seven months of its implementation into a medical school. Despite being emphasized in only two first year courses and one fourth year course, students from all four classes used KM to search and browse documents. All faculty members involved with courses piloting KM used the system to upload and manage lecture documents. Currently, we are working with eight course directors to transition their courses to KM for next year.

Abstracting and Indexing↗

PubMed2003

Formative evaluation to guide early deployment of an online content management tool for medical curriculum.

KM is a Web-accessible, comprehensive database that organizes course materials (at the level of full lectures, not just outlines or syllabi) from the Vanderbilt School of Medicine curriculum. KM uses natural language processing techniques to analyze educational documents for biomedical concepts. Lecture handouts and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations are indexed and available online for students, faculty and administrators to search for individual or interrelated concepts across the medical school curriculum.

Anatomy↗