Flip teaching critical appraisal using Prezi

Flipping critical appraisal for dental undergraduates

Flip teaching

I am designing and implementing a new Evidence-Based Dentistry (EBD) curriculum for dental undergraduates at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, QMUL, and am using blended learning or "flip teaching".

The idea is to give students learning material and tasks to do in their own time and to come to seminars full of questions and problems that we then work through. I am trying this with critical appraisal and have thought I would exploit Prezi's ability to use voice recordings to make a step-by-step presentation that students can follow at their own pace.

Creating a prezi with voice recordings

I have to say that this was time-consuming - it took 5 days of annual leave to put together - and of course I wait to see the response from the students. But I hope to be able to use the material also with staff as I try to help them feel comfortable and confident with EBD so the time spent may become relatively insignificant.

The plan is that students watch this presentation, which uses a report of a randomised controlled trial, and then - on our virtual learning environment - there is a paper to critically appraise themselves, ready to present and discuss in the seminar.

Last year with the same cohort of students I used pre-recorded screen casts that lasted no more than 10 minutes but I like the idea of students being able to go back and forwards at their own pace, which is what I have been able to do here.

Given the subjectivity of critical appraisal I wouldn't expect everyone to agree with mine. The intention is to teach the students the mechanism or process of critical appraisal - not to say that this particular critical appraisal is an ideal :-)

You can make the presentation below full screen by clicking the icon in the bottom right hand corner after you have clicked "Start Prezi".