Recently, Education Policy, Organization & Leadership professors Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope visited the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Peoria, on the invitation of NSF project partner and U of I College of Medicine professor Dr. Richard Tapping. The purpose of the visit was to explore shared teaching and research interests in the rapidly changing field of medical education.

In their NSF funded project, “Assessing Complex Epistemic Performance in Online Learning Environments,” Kalantzis, Cope, Tapping and their research colleagues have been investigating the development of critical clinical thinking in e-learning environments. Using the peer review function in the collaborative learning platform, CGScholar, medical students in the research study developed clinical case analyses. For instance, in one cycle of intervention, students developed analyses of cases of autoimmunity including rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes mellitus, lupus, and multiple sclerosis. When they conducted their peer reviews, they analyzed a different condition, but against the same clinical analysis rubric. The development of student thinking is tracked in CGScholar by “big data” analytics, which record numerous small datapoints as students progress towards learning objectives. These objectives center on critical thinking and professional judgment, not just the straightforwardly "correct" answers about fact and procedure that are the focus of traditional assessments.

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