Creating Web-based Patient Education to Enhance Studentsʼ Experience in a PBL Curriculum (2001)

Objective: Problem-based learning requires students to synthesize information, be able to discuss new material, and teach their fellow students. In addition, the students should become accustomed to evaluating the resources they encounter, especially those on the Web. Unfortunately, students sometimes “cut and paste” information for their learning issues without any synthesis. In order to promote synthesis and evaluation, we designed an exercise for a first-year PBL course, in which students were required to develop Web-based patient-education materials. Description: In 1999 in the Clinical Application of Basic Sciences course at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Medicine, students were instructed to develop a Web-based patient education site as part of their group activity. A Web template was created for each group so that no knowledge of HTML or Web publishing was required. Each group could access the template and enter text, links, and/or images. The students were not required to use the template if someone in their group was knowledgeable about Web-page development. Students were given an article about writing patient education materials.1 This was to reinforce the notion that the material could not be taken directly from medical texts, but must be appropriate for patients. Each group (eight to nine students per group) was given one of six patient scenarios to guide their research and site development. This kept the students focused on common medical problems or issues: cancer prevention, geriatrics, and developmental disabilities, for example. Each group was required to present its Web site to the other groups and the course faculty. The students were informed that the site judged to be the best would result in each student's receiving a copy of Harrison's Textbook of Medicine as a prize. The Web sites will be judged on the following criteria: creativity, relevance to the patient, accuracy of information, choice of appropriate hyperlinks, appropriate functionality for the patient group, inclusion of authors and short bios, correct use of citations, and indicator of currency, i.e., the date. As a part of the course, the students completed a session on evaluating Web resources; the session covered the criteria for a good Web site: authorship, publishing body, point of view or bias, referral to other sources, verifiability, and currency. As of the fall of 2000, the students had not yet completed their projects. However, two weeks prior to the deadline for project completion, seven of 18 groups had begun work on theirs. Of these groups, six had included text with links to specific Web sites; three groups had completed information about the Web-site authors; two had included images; three had included their references (but the citation styles were not consistent or always complete). Some of the students combined language appropriate for patients with medical language. Discussion: It is clear that patients are becoming more computer literate and more likely to research medical topics on the Web. It is hoped that after completing this exercise, students will have synthesized information and thought about it from a patient's perspective. Additionally, the students should be better prepared to evaluate medical Web sites for their future patients.