How we created a targeted teaching tool using blog architecture for anesthesia and critical care education – The A/e anesthesia exchange blog

Abstract

Background: The time constraints on a clinical educator have increased immensely over the past decade. Technology has served to significantly bridge the challenge over the past decade.

What we did: We created a method of delivering targeted educational content for point of care learning in anesthesia and critical care. Our blog platform allows clinician-educators to deliver content as videopodcasts and presentations to learners in a straightforward and easily accessible manner both on the web and through mobile platforms. The A/e Anesthesia exchange “pushed” content at predetermined time intervals to learners and content was based on timely topics that were clinically relevant to their daily practice. The A/e Blog allowed multiple authors across disciplines to contribute content, thus providing learners potentially access to resources of knowledge from the entire team of clinician-educators at an institution. During the pilot phase of A/e blog implementation, the authors gained valuable insights into the use and limitations of web-based technology as a teaching tool. These included challenges with faculty and student participation, managing techno stress of faculty not fluent with the technology, tailoring content based on analytics data and web platform robustness and spam protection.

Conclusion: With these insights in hand, we anticipate the launch of an even more robust A/e: Anesthesia Exchange (version 2.0) by the end of 2013.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support from University of Iowa’s Instructional Technology Service’s SITA (Students for Instructional Technology Assistants) program, managed by Stephen Silva. Dr Saichaie and Ms. Benson were former SITA’s at the University of Iowa. Mindi Allbaugh in the Department of Anesthesia was instrumental in the day-to-day administration, posting of content and organizing schedules of presenters. Her contribution to the success of the blog is greatly appreciated. The authors acknowledge the support of the Chair and faculty members of the Department of Anesthesia, University of Iowa where this program was piloted and supported.

Declaration of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest.