Using a filter to improve the chatroom experience in interactive medical education

A computer chatroom exercise between faculty and students was used in a Human Behavior course for first-year medical students to provide an interactive exam review learning exercise. Two conditions were compared--one that filtered out all irrelevant student comments, and one without the filter that permitted all student comments. Four one-hour chatroom sessions, each with eight groups of five students, were conducted with all comments recorded. Comments were rated as on- or off-task by a blinded external faculty member. The filtered condition resulted in increased on-task and decreased off-task student comments compared with the non-filtered condition. However, students made fewer total comments in the filtered situation. Results suggested that a trade-off occurred between focused and uninhibited faculty-student communication; the implications are discussed.