The primary aim of a radiology residency program is to train residents to become well-educated, independent, professional, and skilled radiologists [4]. We aimed to do a single-center retrospective study to identify the most reliable predictor variables related to the usage of electronic platform-based educational material for radiology resident to predict a successful final year multiple choice test.
We found that number of total login times, login frequency per month, number of per-topic addressed questions, and number of topic-verified correct answers to multiple choice test all showed. We added electronic platform – based educational material to the formal curriculum to conver all possible field of radiology trainings which are not possible to be covered through frontal lectures. Our results seem to confirm the importance of electronic scores in multiple choice question tests and, most likely, in all professional life of radiologists. The formal curriculum consists on reading electronic assignments, lectures, and other learning activities formally assigned to learners by adding electronic-based educational material to formal frontal lectures during residency from RADPRIMER and STATDX platform.
Electronic-based educational material provides several advantages over frontal lectures including the possibility to access educational material from virtually any site that has a computer and an internet connection and at virtually any time of the day or night [5], to integrate text, images, and sounds in ways that standard textbooks cannot, to access and customize educational materials for to their own learning preferences [6], and the greater degree of interaction they permit. Electronic educational material can be presented through electronic didactic sheets and in multiple-choice test format that helps learners evaluate their performance and identify their own strengths and weaknesses and make teachers aware of their progress in knowledge.
Electronic-based educational material is widely used in educational sciences, including medical education courses. This paradigm shift challenges the tradition of lectures and shifts the educational experience in a learner-centred [7] way since each resident is empowered to organize his own curriculum based on electronic materials instead of frontal lectures. This shift was pushed even further by the COVID-19 pandemic. At a time when usual active learning practices have been stopped or, at least, changed, trainees have found electronic-based educational platform a very useful online learning tool to keep their learning going.
Our study provides incremental data to the existing literature that offers insight into factors that contribute to a successful radiology residency program based on electronic-based educational material. According to a previous survey [8] which included 200 radiology residents in USA, the average radiology resident works 50 hours per week excluding time on call (range, 40–60 hours) and 67 hours per week including time on call. Residents at all levels spent an average of 9 hours per week studying with a range from 2 to 27 hours per week. Most of that time was spent reading textbooks (4–5 per year), followed by journals (mainly during the third and fourth year of residency), notes and teaching files. Residents spent an average of 7 hours per week attending lectures and conferences. Beside the changes in didactic flow due to COVID outbreak, regardless of how effective electronic-based material is, frontal lecture should not be entirely supplanted. Many important lessons about excelling as a physician can only be learned in actual practice [6]. The numerous weekly hours dedicated to the assistance activity by residents often do not allow adequate coverage of the hours of frontal teaching required by the program. The use of an electronic-based educational platform, allows the availability of a vast network of information that can potentially partially replace the traditional frontal lectures.
The use of electronic-based educational platform allows immediate and exhaustive access to the essential information necessary to correctly propose a differential diagnosis relating to the radiological findings identified during the evaluation of the images and described in the report. In addition, electronic-based educational platform allows learners to conduct a personal test to evaluate the degree of self-learning achieved within the various teaching modules and verify the increase in knowledge in the various areas of imaging. Constant and immediate access to more detailed information relating to the different pathological findings, and formulation of the main differential diagnoses for each pathological finding.
Interactive learning is crucial for effective medical, and particularly radiology education, since it provides active retention of informations [9, 10]. In particular, the use of multiple-choice questions contributes to develop a critical thinking which is essential in the clinical practice. Students must take time to apply concepts, already consolidated, to answer multiple-choice questions even during recorded lectures. Multiple-choice questions will invariably lead to a higher level of learning concepts and solicitate learners to read more about a specific topic [11]. The use of electronic-based educational platform provides a complete coverage of the whole theoretical knowledge which otherwise could not have been covered by the lectures only and allows radiology residents to have basic knowledge in all areas of radiology diagnostics, from a theoretical point of view. Previously, it was impossible to cover such a vast amount of information based solely on the lectures or on the study of traditional texts.