gms | German Medical Science

The Curriculum of the Medical University of Vienna has 24 scheduled 45 minute units per week of which roughly one third are small group sessions. The entering classes in fall 2004 and again 2005 numbered 1560 students. Thus an elaborate and intricate schedule must be devised since both class rooms and the number of teachers are limiting factors. Similarly any additional elective courses require an efficient organisation.

Team-Based Learning, which was offered as an elective in the first year of the Medical Curriculum in Vienna in both the summer terms 2005 and 2006, is organised entirely online. Students are informed about Team-Based Learning courses via email and through an entry in the on-line study-guide. This leads them to a web-page containing information about the course and links to the registration/enrollment form as well as all additional resources. Enrollment is realised by a php-script using mysql as a database. Students data and course data are stored in seperate tables. Thus students, once registered, may easily enrol in different courses. Correction of data or signing off from a course is handled by the same script.

Courses are offered in parallel groups, each with a limited number of students. Since the timestamp of enrollment is used for allocation of places, changing beween groups is possible only after signing off. Each entry or change of data is acknowledged by email.

Using a second php-script, students of a group are assigned to a team and informed about their team via email. The working space of each team is assigned using a downloadable image of the lecture hall. Allocation of individual students to a team is done by consecutively completing teams to the desired size of 7 members. Students also obtain the course certificates from forms downloaded from the course’s webpage. All materials documenting the Team-Based Learning sessions are provided to the participants as a pdf-file for about one week after completion of the course.

This kind of online organisation was highly appreciated by students as shown by the evaluation.