OPAL: outcomes for personal and adaptive learning

1
OPAL outcomes for personal and adaptive learning

• Rachel Ellaway1, Patricia Warren2, Catriona
  Bell3, 1MVM Learning Technology Section,
  2Medical Teaching Organisation, 3Veterinary
  Teaching Organisation, University of Edinburgh,
  Edinburgh, UK

2
OPAL

• Edinburgh Principals e-Learning Fund Project
  2004-2005 (12 months funding)
• Opportunity to create staff and student focused
  curriculum maps for medicine and veterinary
  medicine
• Instantiated inside their respective VLEs
• Divergent practices following curriculum needs
• Based on learning objectives and outcomes
• Multi-dimensional matrices
• why do this?

3
Using the mapStudents
Where will I learn about about X ?
Where did I learn about about X ?
How will I be assessed about about X ?
How do I learn about about X ?
How does X link in with what I will learn later
in the course ?
How will learning about X be relevant to me in
practice ?
4
Using the map Teaching Staff
Is X being assessed?
When are the students taught about X ?
How does X relate to other topics?
Do I need to include X in my classes, or has it
been covered already ?
What will students already have learned about X
before coming to my class/rotation ?
5
Using the map Curriculum developers
Does the teaching and assessment of X match up?
Is X being taught and assessed too much or too
little?
Where is this particular discipline addressed in
the curriculum?
How does the teaching of X match professional
competencies?
6
Using the map Quality Assurance Bodies
Where is X provided in the curriculum ?
What kinds of physiology topics are being
taught?
How is X provided in the curriculum ?
How much assessment is there in the curriculum ?
Where (and how) is X assessed in the curriculum ?
7
Using the map Prospective Students
What would they teach me in this particular
course ?
What would I need to do throughout the course ?
How would I be taught and assessed?
How is this course different to those at other
schools ?
8
OPAL process

• Iteratively built system
• Collecting and coding learning objectives
• Terminal outcomes
• Session instance
• Year and module instance
• Classification - MeSH (Medicine) or LoC (Vets)
  based
• Keywords curriculum, teaching and assessment
  methods
• Mapping to
• Scottish Doctors and Tomorrows Doctors
• R(D)SVS Programme Outcomes (based on RCVS Day
  One Skills expected of new graduate)
• Many issues encountered

9
Coding and Semantics i

• Learning objective statements in many forms
• Unitary, compound list, bulleted list, hierarchy,
  prose
• Needed to be unitary - comprehensible as an
  independent statement
• Many needed to be normalised - restructured and
  revalidated - in new form
• Dealing with semantic complexity e.g. synonyms
  locomotor, bones and joints, rheumatology etc
  problematic for syntactic systems (computers)
• Medical classification using MeSH
• US system - US language and spelling
• Subjective trees and hierarchies
• Missing terms - redefined terms - EdMeSH
• When to use tree inheritance
• How to handle resulting glossary

10
Coding and Semantics ii

• Required vocabularies for
• teaching method (PBL, bedside, self-directed)
• assessment mode (OSCE, portfolio, exam)
• curriculum structures (semester, rotation,
  attachment)
• Etc - whither METRO?
• Stability of curriculum outcomes (internal for
  Medics vs external for Vets)
• Versioning between academic sessions
• Relationship to ever more granular curriculum
  representations
• Ownership and maintenance by teaching staff

11
Relation to parent systems

• All OPAL management, representation and linking
  are fully integrated with respective programmes
  VLEs
• Follows an object oriented architecture
• Connects with all basic system objects people,
  events, resources, information etc
• Cross-connects with emerging subsystems - PPD,
  logbooks etc
• Cross-mapping opportunities (SDMCG, MEDINE
  Tuning)
• Anticipated OPAL becoming the VLEs underlying
  semantic and ontological underpinning layer (SOUL)

12
Diverging and converging Practice

• OPAL for medicine and veterinary medicine
  differs
• Outcome framework - internal vs external
• Keywording - structured vs unstructured, MeSH vs
  LoC
• Granularity of objectives
• Intra-system connectivity
• And converge
• Versioning, ownership and unitary statements
• Multiple classifications
• Complexity and extent of process
• Limited ability to carry out - central support
  staff as curriculum cartographers

13
Unresolved Issues

• Moving to curriculum mainstream with appropriate
  resourcing
• How to get curriculum-wide buy-in and commitment
  from teaching staff
• How to accommodate the multi-dimensional and
  semantically complex nature of the task more
  efficiently - without losing functionality
• Resolving tensions between process and product
• Resolving inherent partialities of curriculum
  cartographers
• How to represent the OPAL map in many different
  ways to different users for different purposes

14
Where next?

• Handing over LO ownership to teachers
• Completing first pass curriculum map
• Roll out student and staff representation and
  tools (restructuring VLEs)
• Finesse and speed up process
• Appropriate resourcing and commitment
• Link these maps with other maps elsewhere
• Do all of this in a sustainable way

15
OPAL outcomes for personal and adaptive learning

• Rachel Ellaway1, Patricia Warren2, Catriona
  Bell3, 1MVM Learning Technology Section,
  2Medical Teaching Organisation, 3Veterinary
  Teaching Organisation, University of Edinburgh,
  Edinburgh, UK