2006 OPEN FORUM Abstracts
An analysis of the data integrity of an electronic course archival / management system (CMS) in a web-enhanced respiratory care program
Douglas
E. Masini EDD RPFT RRT AE-C FAARC, Donald
A. Samples, Shane Keene. East Tennessee State University Cardiopulmonary
Science Program, Elizabethton, Tennessee.
Introduction: We began web-enhancing all cardiopulmonary
science (CPSC) courses (n=12) in 2001 with the goal of having a Blackboard CMS
site for all courses by 2006. A recent AARC study revealed that leadership in
respiratory care education will undergo a dramatic change in the next two
decades. Therefore, these 'programs-in-transition' must scrutinize the existing
hard copy and paper formatted lesson plans, syllabi, and visual aids used in
the program, particularly when recreating lesson plans or matching lessons to
the NBRC essentials. This is perceived
as a critical process when passing on course information to new faculty, new
educators and new program or clinical directors. Problem Statement: Is datum
electronically corrupted during transfer to (and uploaded from) zip-files? To evaluate data integrity after archival, we
initiated a simple program to analyze the quality of lesson material archived
in the electronic course management / archival system (CMS).
Method: All classroom and online courses are
stored in a zip-file in a central electronic database. Data integrity was defined on a Likert Scale
(1 to 5) by all faculty members on three specific indicator questions: a. Did the datum maintain font/point/numerical
structure in archival ?, b. Was order and sequence of pages maintained in
archival ?, c. Was visual slide/movie integrity maintained in archival ? (Table
1). Interrater reliability (IR) was
measured and a threshold of 85% was deemed an acceptable measure of
data-integrity. Findings: In this analysis
of all 12 web-enhanced CPSC courses, data integrity was acceptable. Changes in linked file URL address' and
eMailing of archived files (question a.) were the greatest threat to data
integrity post-unzipping of archived
files. In file storage in the CMS there was no corruption of datum archived in
zip-files.
Table 1. Data
integrity findings in zip files uploaded from archival.
| Faculty | a. Font//Numerical (IR) | b. Order (IR) | c. Visual/slides (IR) |
| M | 4 (86%) | 5 (100%) | 4 (93%) |
| S | 4 | 5 | 5 |
| K | 5 | 5 | 5 |