Personalized support of medical students' professional vision in ward round communication with focus on team coordination and empathy using eye movement modelling examples

Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Term: 2025-2029
Contact person: M. Gartmeier

Project partner: Prof. Dr. Tina Seidel, Chair for Educational Psychology at TUM
Other cooperation partners: The project is part of the DFG-SFB-Transregio 419 "Simulation-based learning in higher education: Advancing research on process diagnostics and personalized interventions (SHARP)" https://www.en.mcls.uni-muenchen.de/research/sharp-initiative/index.html

Description:
The research project "Personalized support of medical students' professional vision in ward round communication with focus on team coordination and empathy using eye movement modelling examples", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), started at TUM MEC on October 1. The project is being carried out in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Tina Seidel, who holds the Friedl Schöller Endowed Chair for Educational Psychology at the TUM SOT.

The project´s focus is the promotion of visual expertise in the field of clinical ward round communication. We assume that physicians use specialized visual behaviors in the context of inpatient ward rounds to achieve central objectives of ward rounds more effectively, especially in the areas of team communication, empathy and clinical decision-making. To promote visual expertise in this context, we are designing a personalized, digital learning environment with Eye Movement Modeling Examples (EMME) at its core - video clips that show expert eye movements in authentic communicative situations. Medical students evaluate these EMMEs through written reflection, receive AI-generated feedback on their reflection texts and can refine / expand these based on the feedback.

The project is part of the Collaborative Research Centre SFB-Transregio 419 "Simulation-based learning in higher education: Advancing research on process diagnostics and personalized interventions (SHARP)", which is carried out in cooperation with TUM and LMU Munich and is also funded by the DFG.

In many areas of practice, such as medical practice or school teaching, skills such as collaborative diagnostics or complex problem solving are increasingly expected. The SHARP Collaborative Research Center is investigating how simulations can be designed to systematically promote these skills. Artificial intelligence plays a key role in determining the level of competence and adapting simulations to individual needs. Research is also being conducted into the skills that university lecturers need in order to effectively integrate personalized, simulation-based learning into the curriculum and their courses so that students can be better prepared for the complex demands of practice.

"We are researching the conditions and mechanisms of the acquisition of complex skills with AI-supported simulations," explains Professor Frank Fischer, Chair of Education and Educational Psychology at LMU and spokesperson for the CRC. "The knowledge we are developing in SHARP has potential for innovations in higher education teaching and evidence-based practice," emphasizes deputy spokesperson Professor Tina Seidel (TUM).

SHARP is the first Collaborative Research Centre in educational research and aims to develop important foundations for innovations in higher education. The CRC brings together the disciplines of medicine, biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, educational science and psychology. In addition to LMU and TUM, the University of Augsburg and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre are also involved.