PotePedia, the digital knowledge network of the University of Pécs Medical School, supports the work of students and instructors with renewed services and new opportunities. The results of the latest development milestone of the second-generation medical education curriculum system will provide effective assistance in the preparation of the medschool’s approximately 3500 students.
“PotePedia, the cloud-based repository for the training material of the Medical School in Pécs, has come a long way. It has been developed and fine-tuned by a team of developers for three years on, along the feedback of the instructors, and it is still unique in terms of medical education in Hungary”, said László Fekete, head of the Digital Marketing Office of the faculty, who is also the coordinator of the curriculum development project. He was also interviewed as the developer of the digital tool aimed at summarising and updating the knowledge of medical education in Pécs and developing the learning culture.
As he said, PotePedia is an integral part of the medical informatics ecosystem that the UP MS is developing in a coordinated way in the context of the PotePillars strategy for the development of a learning culture for digital well-being. This includes the faculty websites, the intranet, the faculty’s educational technology tools (internal stream, POTEcho) and the POTE+ mobile application, which is also in development.
According to László Fekete, the digital repository of the training material of the renown Medical School in Pécs – the self-developed knowledge network that not only meets 21st century demands, but also goes beyond them – has become practically complete. Thousands of lecture materials, notes, handouts, and videos are available to the students, providing the basis for effective learning and successful examinations. Even now, this educational core material is constantly being expanded and updated, but the so-called second generation PotePedia system, based on a modern approach to learning culture through teacher-student collaboration, is also available. It is also one of the pillars of the PotePillars strategic plan of the Medical School in Pécs.
The curricular system with its new approach and state-of-the-art services is currently only available for basic subjects, but according to László Fekete, it is developing very dynamically, and it is planned to include preclinical and clinical subjects by the end of the spring semester of the 2022/2023 academic year.
Question banks, learning materials using 3D technologies, new levels of collaboration
The project leader undoubtedly highlighted the currentness of the knowledge base as the most important aspect, but stressed that this is only the beginning, since student feedback accompanying the entire training curriculum and the opportunities for face-to-face and workshop-like collaboration between teacher and student will bring a new colour and a new level to our education. He pointed out that there is a greater emphasis on self-processing and self-assessment through the development of question banks. At the same time, they want to support the work of instructors with more qualitative and quantitative data than ever before on how and how effectively our students use the learning materials provided.
PotePedia will feature new technologies, such as 3D, one of the most exciting demonstration areas, but also provides space for the contents of the campus-wide streaming system, and educational technology to support lectures and administration. The development of the user interface is also on the agenda, with interactive and customisable dashboards and mobile app support for PotePedia users.
“After the up-to-date accessibility, perhaps the most important innovation is that the digital curriculum system of the Medical School in Pécs now collects the student opinions in order to further improve the system, to advance the user experience, but above all to enable our instructors to get to know the feedback of our students in order to improve the learnability, comprehension and successful exams” - emphasizes the head of the Digital Marketing Office.
As an example of the latter, he cites the possibility to comment directly on course materials and the possibility to address questions to the instructor of the subject within each course.
We can also expect to see the opening of the instructor collaboration toolkit (independent subject areas), which can be used either as workshops or as an internal professional backdrop.
The next major milestone for PotePedia will be the upgrading of clinical curricula, which is also scheduled to be completed by the end of the spring semester of the 2022/2023 academic year. The developers also welcome student feedback and suggestions by email or using the dedicated internal platform.