International Council of Ophthalmology

WORD Project

1 Project's Definition

The project aims to create an area within the International Council of Ophthalmology's (ICO) web site to allow Program Directors to have access to educational resources that they can use for their residents’ education.

The name chosen for this area is "WORD" (World Ophthalmology Residency Development)

2 Reasons for the project

This project could be of great help for almost every residency program, since it would solve two common problems many of them share, even the most developed ones:

· Some programs do not have subspecialists in each and every area of ophthalmology who could educate their residents,

· Some programs may have these subspecialists, but do not have time to develop all the teaching/learning interventions that are desirable in residents’ education.

In the next paragraphs we expand on some of the specific topics that were mentioned at the Resident Program Directors Course in Buenos Aires, and the way in which cooperation among residency programs through the Internet could provide them a solution.

1) Shortage of human resources: During the course it was mentioned that many residencies do not have subspecialists in some specific areas, such as Uveitis and Neurophthalmology, among others. These residencies would benefit if they could have access, for example, to audiovisual conferences on the Internet.

2) Lack of ideal teaching methods: Dr. Karl Golnik described and gave examples of how useful videos are to show all kinds of pupillary defects and for role-playing doctor-patient encounters. Since not every residency is capable of generating such resources, the rest of the programs could benefit when sharing them via the Internet.

3) Lack of clinical cases: Less frequent pathologies are scarcely seen in some residencies so not all residents are exposed to these cases in the clinic. Nowadays there are many resources that allow us to generate ‘virtual patients’ who could be ‘examined’ by residents. Even programs with a high volume of patients could benefit from exposing their residents to cases presented by other residencies.

4) Lack of interactivity in lectures: Often there is no time to ask and debate during lectures. Adding forums to audiovisual presentations could allow this kind of interaction.

5) Lack of time for formative evaluations: We are usually short on time for formative evaluations. There are many tools that allow us to perform evaluations with immediate feedback for the student, via the Internet.

3 Project's Goals

We think that the ICO could aim to the following goals:

· To produce (new), gather (existing), classify and organize educational material available on the Internet, in order to improve medical education in ophthalmology residency programs.

· To stimulate continuous improvement of this material, both in content and didactic resources.

4 The Website

Initially the Program Directors Web Area could be composed of two principal areas:

· The Stage

· The Backstage

The Stage is the area open to the world.

The Backstage is where learning material is processed, evaluated, classified and organized to reach the Stage.

4.1 The Stage

The 'Stage Area' is the part that is open to all users and initially could be divided in three areas:

· What to teach: Mainly the ICO Residency Program and any other guidelines regarding suggested teaching content, with its goals and objectives.

· How to teach: This area would include content that would help teach more effectively, including but not limited to: 

· The content used in the Program Directors Course

· Tools to create content

· Guidelines to prepare lectures, case presentations, virtual patients, wet labs, quizzes, multiple choice questions, short answer questions, etc.

· What to teach with: This area would include content that could be used by Program Directors to enhance their teaching resources such as:

· Audiovisual interactive lectures

· Role playing videos

· Surgery videos

· Case presentations

· Virtual Patients

· Different types of evaluations to be completed online with immediate feedback.

4.2 The Backstage

The Backstage would be an area where all the "Players" (see next) interact before any material goes online in "The stage".

This area would be restricted with different levels of access.

5 The Players

One of the key factors for the success of this project is to involve as many 'players' as possible. This of course  is a challenge to organize but, using the right communications tools, should be manageable.

Following are some of the roles and areas we foresee for this project and all will be defined next.

· Web hunters

· Content creators

· Content experts

· Pedagogic experts

· Product tester

· Web Judges

· OK Panel

5.1 Web hunters

Web hunters would explore the web looking for already posted educational material and send the link to the ICO web lab.

Anyone can be a Web hunter, but mostly we would encourage Program Directors to have their residents do this.

5.2 Content creators

Content creators could be anyone that, following the guidelines defined by the Pedagogic experts, sends contents that they created to be evaluated for posting in the site. The simplest way would be adding audio (instructions would be provided) to the lectures given to residents by staff members.

5.3 Content experts

Content experts would be volunteers approved by the ICO who would inform if content provided by Web hunters and Content creators, conforms to the quality guidelines defined by the ICO.

5.4 Pedagogic experts

Pedagogic experts would define guidelines and recommendations to help Web hunters and Content creators provide quality material. 

5.5 Product tester

A Product tester is a volunteer that tests the final product once it has been approved to go online, looking for technical flaws (e.g. non-working links,  excessive download time, etc).

Mostly, Product testers could be residents.

5.6 Content coordinators

Content coordinators help any proposed content to make its way from the Backstage to the Stage interacting with all Players.

6 Final considerations

These days there are many examples of successful projects created by collaborative efforts via the Internet. Linux, Wikipedia, Moodle and MySQL are only some of them.

What all of these projects have in common is the generous collaboration of many people, with results that are unimaginable without the support of huge economic resources (which none of them had), and that now are available to all of us with no cost.

We hope these achievements help inspire Program Directors to help build the collaboration network described in this project.

Everyone committed to learning and teaching, from first year residents to Residency Program Directors or any ophthalmologist, can help this project come true.

If you would like to be part of this project, in any way, please contact us at word@icoph.org.

Eduardo Mayorga, MD, Chair

ICO World Ophthalmology Residency Development (WORD) Project

Jefe del Servicio de Oftamología

Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, Argentina

E-mail: word@icoph.org