Date: June 3, 2008
Leading medical school chooses TurningPoint™ interactive assessment to help train tomorrow’s doctors
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, one of Britain’s leading medical schools, today announced that it has chosen Turning Technologies interactive assessment tool, TurningPoint, to improve learning outcomes of its medical students.
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, part of Queen Mary, University of London (QMUL), is one of Britain’s top medical schools with an outstanding reputation of excellence in both research and teaching. Students study a number of different programmes including the MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) which all medical students have to pass in order to be registered by the UK’s General Medical Council. Dr. Patricia Revest, Head of Year 1 of the MBBS Programme, comments: “Our students benefit from an innovative curricula taught by internationally renowned staff. We chose TurningPoint to help both lecturers and students assess how well a concept has been understood.”
TurningPoint is an award winning presentation, teaching and lecturing tool that integrates easily with Microsoft® PowerPoint®. The handheld device enables interactive communication between the presenter and the audience. The presenter can create multiple choice questions on PowerPoint slides for the audience to answer simply by pressing the appropriate button on the device. TurningPoint can be used in either in anonymous mode or, if more appropriate, by allocating each device to a named individual.
The technology has already proved itself in the medical school. It is being used to assist students with one of the important aspects of their learning - practical workshops. Using the devices (which students call clickers), students can feedback the results obtained during their class so they can be discussed immediately and in context. Lecturers can quickly check whether the class has grasped the important concepts by asking multiple choice questions with students simply press the appropriate button to indicate their answer giving them immediate feedback. Lecturers can then adapt their explanations according to the answers received and achieve improved understanding.
Dr. Revest comments: “Students really like the interactive aspects, which have been so successful in engaging students in practical sessions, that the school decided to expand the use of the technology to include its use in large group teaching in our 400-seater lecture theatre. All our first year students will have their own clicker and by registering individual devices to students it will enable students to assess their own understanding in a frequent and timely manner and allow us to follow each student’s progress throughout the year.”