Abstract:

Introduction:
To ensure the acquisition of transversal competences while maintaining profound learning is a keystone in the European Higher Education Space and a major challenge to the academic professor. Effective communication is one of the most valuable competences, yet it needs to be built from early stages to help the students to simultaneously be able to integrate and communicate critical information. Real-life collaborative project-based learning is highly valued by the students contributing simultaneously to build profound knowledge. Evaluation strategies such as the peer-review process or co-evaluation approaches with supporting TIC tools, may favor implication, interaction and motivation. We aimed to develop the design, rubrics and TIC-supporting tools to evaluate a scientific-based methodology for real-life applied projects enhancing simultaneously specific competences and effective communication.

Methods:
We defined a project developed through a semester, as part of the evaluation in a physiology course for medical students, based on studying the physiological variability of diagnostic biomarkers from standard electrocardiographic (ECG) registers taken from a large sample of medical students, their own ECG imprints. After analyzing statistically the physiological variability the students have to prepare a scientific short-article and poster that goes through peer-review process and latter public defense. We have defined a rubric with six indicators of the communication and four descriptor levels, and adapted it to either oral and written/graphic competences. Additionally, we designed a TIC application with five questions and five levels to obtain scores in the co-evaluation process during moderated poster presentations. Finally, we created a form to evaluate the satisfaction of the students to the methodology.

Results:
The design of the study includes the following phases:
1) The students acquire their own ECG creating a digitalized database;
2) Appropriately measure up to ten pre-defined ECG markers and statistically explore their variability;
3) Focus teams on specific markers analyze the data in context with the literature and prepare a short-article and poster according to good practice guidelines;
4) The written materials go through double blind peer-review process giving formatting and content feedback before the public defenses;
5) Each team presents their work in moderated poster format presentations being instantly evaluated by the audience responding questions from their own mobile devices regarding their communicative skills, quality of the results and ability to discuss them in context.

The rubric indicators selected were related to the quality of the content, their ability to transmit and structure critical ideas in context and using specific language, and the resources deployed to convey and elicit interest. The satisfaction form cover three aspects: how this strategy helped them to improve their work and abilities, time employed, and impact of the peer-review process and co-evaluation strategy in their implication.

Conclusion:
We have presented a design and strategy to develop early effective communication in projects for medical students using custom-developed rubrics for oral and written communication, a scientific-based methodology for work assessment and a co-evaluation strategy with TIC support. We believe that this strategy and design will dramatically improve interaction and implication of the students.

Keywords:

Evaluation methodologies, Effective communication, Project-based learning.