Design a digital collection to include medical museum in the teaching of medical humanities and promote object-based learning education model Erasmus Project

Project Title

Design a digital collection to include medical museum in the teaching of medical humanities and promote object-based learning education model

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Quality and Relevance of Higher Education in Partner Countries

Project Summary

CONTEXT
The Alcmaeon project aims at standing out the role of medical humanities in medical education responds to the need of connecting medical practice with the human dimension of the doctor-patient relationship and extra-scientific values involved in clinical decision-making processes. Medical humanities contribute to improving a fuller understanding of patients, cultures and communities, as well as the social dimension of the scientific enterprise to cure illnesses and develop new therapies.

OBJECTIVES
The Alcmaeon project aims to innovate the teaching of medical history with a new educational approach, object-based learning, and to work in better integration of historical, ethical and psychosocial components of medical humanities.
To achieve its aim the Alcmaeon project produced audio-visual material to digitalize the available collections of a medical museum in Italy, Spain, Greece, the United Kingdom and Romania, in the attempt to promote the different traditions characterizing European medical history and bring the medical museums in the classroom.

TARGET GROUPS
Doctors and universities lectures in humanities in medicine
Almost 100 lecturers were involved in the creation of the 3 Intellectual Outputs

Undergraduate Medical Students
More than 200 medical students were involved in the project to test the material produced

IMPACT
The Alcmaeon project had a direct impact on lectures of medical courses and undergraduate medical students who through participation as project full partners of 5 Higher Education Institutions, were directly involved in the creation and testing of the intellectual outputs.
The project impacted lecturers’ needs providing them with:
– Educational Material easily integrable into the other modules of medical humanities programs, such as medical ethics, medical anthropology or communications skills
– Mapping specific pathways to represent the environment of medical practice and support lecturer to promote the students’ active participation

The project impacted medical students’ needs providing them with:
– An application of a pedagogical model recovering the role of experience in the learning process. Experiential learning is the ideal teaching methodology to take advantage of the pedagogical power of museum collections
– An active immersion in the historical environment represented by our digital museum will stimulate the active students’ participation in the classroom against a passive listening of what lecturers are explaining
– Object-based learning offers the opportunity to observe directly the historical environment and stimulate a reflection about the historical sources

RESULTS
To guarantee the long-term impact on the aforementioned categories, the Alcmaeon project developed three Intellectual Outputs that medical students, lecturers and end-users, in general, can access and use for free from the project portal.

The three Intellectual Outputs are:
IO1 – Training package in medical history for medical humanities lecturers
The Output is divided into two main activities carried out by project partners:
1) Mapping of Medical Humanities (https://alcmaeon.pixel-online.org/TP_Map.php)
This material presents the importance of medical history teaching, a discipline that contributes to improving a fuller understanding of patients, cultures and communities, and the scientific enterprise’s social dimension to cure illnesses and develop new therapies.

2) Educational Material (https://alcmaeon.pixel-online.org/TP_Material.php)
The material consists of a set of educational material organised in 12 units to be used by medical humanities lecturers in their courses.

IO2 – Digital Museum (https://alcmaeon.pixel-online.org/DM_page.php)
The output consists of a set of digital contents placed in an open-access platform addressed to undergraduate medical students to improve their information concerning the historical context explored during the history of medicine courses.

IO3 – Video Library (https://alcmaeon.pixel-online.org/VL_page.php)
The output consists of a database of videos showing the testimonials of doctors or medical lectures experts in the history of medicine, which will support the training package and consolidate the link of the history of medicine with the medical profession.

Project Website

http://alcmaeon.pixel-online.org/index.php

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 219604,5 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSIDAD COMPLUTENSE DE MADRID & Country: ES

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
• UNIVERSITATEA DE MEDICINA SI FARMACIE GRIGORE T POPA DIN IASI
• ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
• PIXEL – ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE
• FUNDATIA EUROED
• UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL