MEdTech Central 3.8
MEdTech Central is a robust integrated teaching and learning system that allows our instructors to easily deliver lecture notes and other electronic resources to students in a secure and centralized manner. The system has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and is managed by our Undergraduate Medical Education Office.
Latest Release Details The Medical Education Technology Unit is pleased to announce that MEdTech Central 3.8.3.1 has been successfully deployed to the meds.queensu.ca server. This significant release is the result of excellent feedback from our students, staff, and faculty, and we look forward to hearing your ideas and comments for future releases. Here are some of the new features included in this release:
New MEdTech Central Features
Creating and Administering Quizzes:Staff and faculty can now create, distribute and review the results of on-line quizzes directly from within MEdTech Central (Admin > Manage Quizzes). Once a quiz has been created in Manage Quizzes it may be attached to a learning event in much the same way a file or link is added via the Manage Events tab. When a teacher is attaching a quiz to a learning event they have a number of configurable options including the ability to time release the quiz, specify the number of minutes a learner can spend taking the quiz, how many attempts the learner can have at taking the quiz, when the quiz results should be displayed to the learner, and more.
Clerkship Rotations and Electives:Clerkship students and students approaching Clerkship now have the ability to submit their electives for approval, view their complete Clerkship schedule including any accommodations assigned to them for regional rotations, and to complete evaluations of their rotations and preceptors directly through the Clerkship tab at the top of the screen. Clerkship administrators can also review and approve student electives, as well as search, browse, and manage individual Clerkship schedules (Admin > Manage Clerkship).
Learning Event Filter Interface:We have developed a new user friendly, highly functional filtering interface for the Learning Events tab. To see it in action you can click the Learning Events tab > and choose "Teacher Filters" from the "Apply Filter" select box. Tip: Instead of scrolling to find a teacher to filter by, try using the find-as-you-type search box.
Learning Event Curriculum Objectives Selection:Course directors and teachers are now required to select which assigned curriculum objectives are covered for each course and learning event. This can be done from the "Director View" or "Teacher View" of any learning event in system.
Learning Event Clinical Presentations Selection:Course directors and teachers are now encouraged to select each of the MCC presentations that are covered by their learning events. This can be done from the "Director View" or "Teacher View" of any learning event in system.
Individual Student Learning Events:Staff administrators can now create learning events for individual students rather than just for entire classes. This allows a highly customized schedule to be created for a specific student or students.
Class of 2013 in People Search:The new student class of 2013, including their student photos have been added to MEdTech Central and can be found by clicking People Search tab > Browse People.
New MEdTech Central Community Features
Community Guest Users:Community administrators can now add guest users to their community (Manage Members > Add Guest Members) who do not have an account in MEdTech Central. When the community administrator adds a guest user to their community, the guest is sent an e-mail with instructions on how to set their password and log into the community. Important Note: Guests are not able to access the rest of MEdTech Central, only the community or communities to which they were added as a guest.
Community Mailing Lists:Community administrators can now enable their own e-mail mailing list for their community (Manage Community > Mailing List). Mailing lists may be configured as either "Announcement Mode" (meaning messages will only be sent to the list if sent by a Community administrator), or "Discussion Mode" (meaning any member of your community may send an e-mail to the list).
Multiple Module Pages:Community administrators can now add multiple pages to their community that utilize the same module or "Page Type" (Manage Pages), and have different content appear on each of those pages. For example, community administrators can now add two or more different announcement pages, each containing different announcements.
Configurable Community Home Page:Community administrators can now control what content will appear on the home page of their community (Manage Pages > Home). For example, they can control the text that will appear on the page, hide or show recent community announcements, events, and history, or even make the home page of their community a discussion forum, photo gallery, etc.
Community Announcements and Events Pages:In this release of MEdTech Central we have split the former Announcements module into two separate page types: an Announcements module and an Events module. As a result of user feedback, we have also introduced the ability for community administrators to allow members and browsing users to submit their own announcements and events to the community (Manage Pages > Announcements > Page Options). Community administrators have the option to require moderation of these announcements and events before they are posted on the community.
Community Galleries and Document Sharing Pages:Community administrators can now move photos and files between different galleries and shared folders.
Community Polling Pages:Community administrators can now add multiple questions to any polling page. In addition you can change the terminology that is used on these pages from "Poll" to "Survey" or "Vote", which allows for greater flexibility.
Community RSS and iCalendar Feeds:Many of the Community modules, including Announcements, Events, and Discussions have RSS feeds available on a per-page basis in this release. In addition, all Events pages also have an iCalendar (ICS) feed that allows community members to subscribe to the calendar using many calendaring applications (i.e. Apple's iCalendar, Outlook, Sunbird, Google Calendar, etc) as well as their mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, HTC Dream, etc).
New MEdTech Central Course Websites
All of the new courses in term 1 and 2 have new course websites. These course websites are delivered through the same powerful content management system that is used by the Community system. The new course websites (listed under their corresponding term on the Courses tab above) should not be thought of as communities, per-se, but they do have the ability to utilize many of the features that also exist in Communities (i.e. Announcements, Document Sharing, Galleries, etc). Where they differ is as follows:
- Course websites look very similar to the rest of MEdTech Central, not like other communities.
- Course websites have a consistent set of pre-defined pages (i.e. Background, Course Calendar, Prerequisites, etc).
- Course Directors, Curricular Coordinators and Program Coordinators are automatically added as administrators of their course website.
- The "Background" page will list each Course Director, Curricular Coordinator and Program Coordinator involved with the particular course. The contact information available on this page is controllable by each person from his or her "My Profile" page (More > My Profile).
- The "Course Calendar" page automatically displays the learning events taking place under the course from the Learning Events tab.
- The "Learning Objectives" page will list each of the learning objectives from the Competency Document assigned to this course by the Curriculum Committee.
There is much more work to be done on the integrated course website functionality; however, this is a huge step forward towards accommodating the new direction the Undergraduate curriculum is taking.
Other New Features
Multiple Organizations:We have made the first step towards introducing multiple organization support into MEdTech Central, with the hope that we can fully support scheduling within Undergraduate and Postgraduate medicine, and even beyond in future releases.
Lockout Policy:For additional security of your MEdTech Central accounts we have implemented a 15-minute lockout period after 5 invalid login attempts, which helps to prevent brute force login attacks. If you find you have forgotten your MEdTech Central username or password, please click the "Forgot your password?" link on the login page and provide your official e-mail address to obtain information on resetting your MEdTech Central password.
New Permission System:The permission system that handles all access control levels within MEdTech Central has been re-developed using a powerful and robust solution that ensures our continued dedication to security while maintaining accessibility and flexibility within MEdTech Central.
MEdTech Central Feature Summary:
- Comprehensive schedule including a visual calendar outlining weekly learning events
- Downloadable lecture notes and other electronic resources
- Syndicated RSS content including student notices, announcements, events, etc.
- View goals and objectives for courses and individual learning events.
- A curriculum search tool that allows you to easily search through the curriculum to find learning events matching your Boolean search term.
- Access to Library Resources from off-campus through the Queen's Web-Proxy.
- Provide system feedback through our easy feedback agent.
- Personal profile management and roaming profile settings.
- Statistics of accessed resources.
- Learning event comments and discussions.
- Teaching event reminders / notifications (30 days, 7 days and 3 days prior).
- Innovative "Community" system to facilitate online collaboration in a familiar social-networking type environment.
Application History:
- 2004-02-20: Online Course Resources 1.0 began beta testing.
- 2004-04-08: Online Course Resources 1.0 went into production.
- 2005-06-20: Online Course Resources 2.0 was released.
- 2006-10-16: Online Course Resources 3.0 was released.
- 2007-02-06: Integrated podcasting pilot project was initiated.
- 2007-09-05: Online Course Resources 3.5 was released.
- 2007-12-22: Online Course Resources 3.6 was released.
- 2008-06-03: University of Calgary, Faculty of Medicine's adopted Online Course Resources as "OSLER" and went into production.
- 2008-08-05: University of Calgary, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine adopted Online Course Resources as "VETCO" and went into production.
- 2008-09-01: Online Course Resources was officially renamed to "MEdTech Central".
- 2008-09-01: MEdTech Central 3.7 was released.
- 2008-10-17: MEdTech Central 3.7.1 was released.
- 2009-08-25: MEdTech Central 3.8.3 was released.
- 2009-09-14: MEdTech Central 3.8.3.1 was released.
- 2009-09-16: School of Rehabilitation Therapy adopts RehabCentral as a pilot project.
New versions of this application are continually being developed to enhance teaching and learning in the School of Medicine, at Queen's University. If you have any comments or feedback, please contact Matt Simpson <
matt.simpson@queensu.ca>
