A trip to Seattle, and the American Academy of Optometry meeting

So, I was out of pocket slightly this last week, as I traveled to Seattle for the American Academy of Optometry meeting, for continuing education, and industry meetings, and even to present a little research.  I had quite a few opportunities to review some new research in Optometric Education, and so my thoughts on this are what follows:

-There are some interesting things going on in higher education.  The Optometric Education section held a symposium on Blended Learning, in which four presenters discussed the general theory behind blending traditional lecture with online lectures, team-based activities, and assignments.  Dr. Linda Casser, who introduced the symposium, held that blended learning is a more innately constructivist method of teaching than traditional lecture or laboratory, which is predominately behaviorist.  The other panelists described their experiences in implimenting Blended Learning in their classes.  One professor merely recorded his lectures and had his students watch them online.  Another recorded some lectures, gave other lectures in person, and engaged the class with assignments in other situations.  All in all, the symposium did a good job presenting how Blended Learning can be used in Optometric Education, and what its benefits are.

-A few papers that were presented studied the effect of gifts from pharmaceutical representatives on students' prescribing practices, and attitudes.  They showed that the gifts (both pure gifts and sampling) do have an effect on student and faculty behavior, and that many students feel they do not receive enough education on how to deal with reps and how to rationally prescribe.

-Interestingly, a few of the paper presentations contained statements that evidenced study problems.  One person said that his findings "did not appear to have a statistically-significant difference," though he apparently did not run the statistics to check.  Another seemed to express some design problems, admitting that she wanted to measure behavior, but used a survey instrument that was inappropriate for that use.