title: Medical Content Searching, Retrieving, and Sharing Over the Internet: Lessons Learned From the mEducator Through a Scenario-Based Evaluation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The mEducator Best Practice Network (BPN) implemented and extended standards and reference models in e-learning to develop innovative frameworks as well as solutions that enable specialized state-of-the-art medical educational content to be discovered, retrieved, shared, and re-purposed across European Institutions, targeting medical students, doctors, educators and health care professionals. Scenario-based evaluation for usability testing, complemented with data from online questionnaires and field notes of users' performance, was designed and utilized for the evaluation of these solutions.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The objective of this work is twofold: (1) to describe one instantiation of the mEducator BPN solutions (mEducator3.0 - "MEdical Education LINnked Arena" MELINA+) with a focus on the metadata schema used, as well as on other aspects of the system that pertain to usability and acceptance, and (2) to present evaluation results on the suitability of the proposed metadata schema for searching, retrieving, and sharing of medical content and with respect to the overall usability and acceptance of the system from the target users.
  
  
  METHODS
  A comprehensive evaluation methodology framework was developed and applied to four case studies, which were conducted in four different countries (ie, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania), with a total of 126 participants. In these case studies, scenarios referring to creating, sharing, and retrieving medical educational content using mEducator3.0 were used. The data were collected through two online questionnaires, consisting of 36 closed-ended questions and two open-ended questions that referred to mEducator 3.0 and through the use of field notes during scenario-based evaluations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The main findings of the study showed that even though the informational needs of the mEducator target groups were addressed to a satisfactory extent and the metadata schema supported content creation, sharing, and retrieval from an end-user perspective, users faced difficulties in achieving a shared understanding of the meaning of some metadata fields and in correctly managing the intellectual property rights of repurposed content.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results of this evaluation impact researchers, medical professionals, and designers interested in using similar systems for educational content sharing in medical and other domains. Recommendations on how to improve the search, retrieval, identification, and obtaining of medical resources are provided, by addressing issues of content description metadata, content description procedures, and intellectual property rights for re-purposed content.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus.
authors.forename: Athos
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5789-5103
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Antoniades
authors.forename: Iolie
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8267-0328
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Nicolaidou
authors.forename: Dimitris
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8260-1931
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Spachos
authors.forename: Jarkko
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5447-0177
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mylläri
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2486-1986
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Giordano
authors.forename: Eleni
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2439-090X
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dafli
authors.forename: Evangelia
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8077-8343
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mitsopoulou
authors.forename: Christos N
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6548-4980
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Schizas
authors.forename: Constantinos
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1271-8151
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Pattichis
authors.forename: Maria
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1307-3252
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nikolaidou
authors.forename: Panagiotis
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9936-5805
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bamidis
mesh_terms: D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male
keywords: evaluation; metadata; repurposing; searching and sharing of medical educational content