Internationalization of Medical Education — Motivations and Formats of Current Practices [Scholarly Article - Medical Science Educator, April 2022]

Title:

Internationalization of Medical Education — Motivations and Formats of Current Practices

 

Authors:

Anette Wu, Edward Choi, Mariette Diderich, Abrar Shamim, Zacharie Rahhal, Madeleine Mitchell, Betty Leask & Hans DeWit 

 

Published:

Medical Science Educator, 27 April 2022 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40670-022-01553-6

 

From the abstract:

Purpose 

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance for medical professionals to engage in work transcending national borders and to deeply understand perspectives of health in other countries. Internationalization of medical education can play a key role to that end, by preparing culturally competent and globally conscious medical healthcare professionals.  The aim of this scoping review is to identify current practices and formats in internationalization in medical education, which to date has received sparse academic attention. The need for this review is heightened amid COVID-19 where a clearer understanding of current internationalization efforts can inform more effective practice. We also explore if the motivations driving internationalization activities in medicine align with current practice and formats based on a framework of thematic categories found in the field of international higher education. In addition, we identify gaps in existing research.

Social Robots in Applied Settings: A Long-Term Study on Adaptive Robotic Tutors in Higher Education [Frontiers in Robotics and AI, March 2022]

Title:

Social Robots in Applied Settings: A Long-Term Study on Adaptive Robotic Tutors in Higher Education 

 

Authors:

Melissa Donnermann, Philipp Schaper & Birgit Lugrin

 

Published:

Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 15 March 2022

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2022.831633/full

 

From the article:

Learning in higher education scenarios requires self-directed learning and the challenging task of self-motivation while individual support is rare. The integration of social robots to support learners has already shown promise to benefit the learning process in this area. In this paper, we focus on the applicability of an adaptive robotic tutor in a university setting. To this end, we conducted a long-term field study implementing an adaptive robotic tutor to support students with exam preparation over three sessions during one semester. In a mixed design, we compared the effect of an adaptive tutor to a control condition across all learning sessions. With the aim to benefit not only motivation but also academic success and the learning experience in general, we draw from research in adaptive tutoring, social robots in education, as well as our own prior work in this field. Our results show that opting in for the robotic tutoring is beneficial for students. We found significant subjective knowledge gain and increases in intrinsic motivation regarding the content of the course in general. Finally, participation resulted in a significantly better exam grade compared to students not participating. However, the extended adaptivity of the robotic tutor in the experimental condition did not seem to enhance learning, as we found no significant differences compared to a non-adaptive version of the robot.