Welcome to EvidenceWorks Remote
This is the online source of the EvidenceWorks curriculum. The curriculum introduces students to the practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and the tools used by physicians to analyze the results of clinical trials. Successful completion of a curriculum unit can qualify for the EvidenceWorks SEPA Scholar Badge. You can read more about digital badges in our FAQ section.
What is Evidence-based Medicine?
An excellent definition of EBM comes from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, " Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients." Read more...
What is the EvidenceWorks curriculum?
The curriculum consists of two independent units - Using Evidence-Based Medicine to Answer a Question of Therapy and Using Evidence-Based Medicine to Answer a Question About a Diagnostic Test. The units have been developed by a collaboration of medical experts, experienced curriculum developers, and high school biology teachers. Each unit has been thoroughly field-tested in advanced high school biology classrooms with more than 1800 students. The units make use of videos of an actual medical team filmed in a major teaching hospital as they work through a clinical problem. Students work along with the team using the scaffolded approach used in teaching EBM to medical students called the 5 A's: Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Apply, Assess.
The curriculum units, which take 10-12 hours of classroom time in the paper and pencil format, are also available as online Moodle courses or ebooks for iPad - all of which are free!
Teachers who are interested in teaching the curriculum in their classrooms can take advantage of our Teacher Page to hear from 3 of our teachers and learn about the three options for using the units with their students. Teachers can download a PDF of the original paper & pencil versions or a Teacher's Manual for Blended Instruction. The Teacher's Manual details how our 
courses and our ebooks for iPad (available from the iTunes Bookstore and the Maine Department of Education's iTunes U site) are ideal for blending classroom assessments of student progress with independent student work.
fastCAT! web app: a unique student-friendly tool for use in appraising the medical literature
Our fastCAT! web app organizes the appraisal of a medical paper and is used by students when they do the final case in each unit "on their own." The app facilitates making a CAT (a Critically Appraised Topic), one of the most important elements of the EBM process. fastCAT is meant to be useful independent of our curriculum and includes YouTube videos that you can explore to learn how to use the tool and to see our approach to teaching EBM.
Our Online Student Courses
In our Student Courses section the motivated student can complete one of our online courses independently as they are self-instructional. Registration requires a valid email address and is free of charge. Using the paradigm of "see one, do one," students join a physician team and learn the EBM process (the 5 A's) to answer a clinical question. They are then challenged to work through a new case "on their own." As noted above, these online courses can easliy be used in the classroom as a blended course with instructor input, class discussions, and student assessments.
