Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

BACKGROUND

Dr. Archana Pradhan is an assistant professor and director of undergraduate education for the OB/GYN program at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She spends half of her time teaching residents and medical students and the other half practicing medicine. She went to Princeton University for her undergraduate degree, Duke University for medical school, and has been in practice and teaching for five years.

CHALLENGE

The medical education field can be challenging for several reasons. Sources of funding and time are always limited, yet the material is so vast and critical to master. Effective and efficient methods of teaching are vital, as well as confidence in students’ knowledge retention.

Dr. Pradhan originally used a basic didactic lecture for an hour and a half with PowerPoint® slides, but knew that the considerable amount of material and long presentations would be to her disadvantage. Because of her previous exposure to audience response technology at an American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology national conference, she was aware that it was a great tool for engaging audiences.

When Dr. Pradhan came on staff at Robert Wood Johnson in 2002 and became responsible for planning lectures, she thought integrating an audience response system into the course would be an ideal solution to engage students and encourage attentiveness. She wrote and received a grant to purchase the equipment.

At that point, she began to research student response technology–how the systems work, integration options with PowerPoint, hardware requirements. Dr. Pradhan found that “TurningPoint was clearly head and shoulders” above its competitors. She also confirmed word-of-mouth recommendations, and her contacts at Columbia University verified that TurningPoint was an excellent choice.

SOLUTION

TurningPoint’s student response system transforms the standard lecture PowerPoint presentation into a powerful interactive presentation and engages students in active learning. Professors display interactive polling questions that allow every student in the class to select a response via their wireless ResponseCard® keypads (”clickers”) and transmit the data immediately to the presentation.

Dr. Pradhan actively uses TurningPoint in her lectures to medical students and residents. She infuses her presentations with questions to assess the group’s comprehension of the material. She finds that Turning Technologies’ response system helps her to be more efficient in her teaching because she can confirm whether students are learning the concepts as she is going through the curriculum. In the middle of her lecture after she discusses topics, she reinforces student understanding with interactive questions. After reviewing the responses, she reiterates when necessary.

TurningPoint helps Dr. Pradhan meet the ongoing challenge of efficient teaching. With the immediate student feedback, she spends extra time only on sections that students haven’t mastered. Interactive polling provides her the ability to be aware of and review only the necessary topics.

Another positive aspect of Dr. Pradhan’s TurningPoint integration is that she enjoyed the opportunity to credibly respond when the dean asked if the grant was money appropriately spent. It not only was money well spent, but heightens the level of education the students receive and betters the program.

Dr. Pradhan has researched knowledge retention and is a passionate champion on the effectiveness of audience response systems. With everything that medical students are focused on, she is enthusiastic to have found an effective methodology for the long-term retention of the course material.

On the technology itself, Dr. Pradhan notes “It’s great because we’re teaching Generation X right now. Today’s students are all about technology; seeing something on the screen and doing something with their hands; it really speaks to the learners that we are currently targeting.”

Lastly, TurningPoint allows her to build in two ways of self-evaluation. During preparation, she can review previous lectures to evaluate where students struggled and hone the message to be more understandable. She also uses the response technology at the end of the lecture for the students to evaluate the session.

CONCLUSION

Dr. Pradhan is thrilled with her experience on many levels. When asked to lecture at other schools, the portability of the system has given her the chance to be an effective, memorable speaker across the country. By “making her lecture come alive,” she finds her audiences to have incredible enthusiasm. People love “having something new and different to play with; it makes them much more attentive to your lecture.”

Last January she presented at OB/GYN Medical Educators conference and wanted to incorporate TurningPoint. She has built an excellent relationship with the Turning Technologies team and her sales representative accompanied her to the conference to ensure the presentation went smoothly.

“My relationship with Turning Technologies is phenomenal. The very few times I have had a small issue, it has been remedied quickly,” she said. “I think the biggest concern people have is that it’s a great tool but would be a disaster if something goes wrong. But TurningPoint’s ease-of-use is one of the best things about it!”

For more information about purchasing Turning Technologies’ audience response systems for your educational needs, contact us at 866-746-3015.