This video lecture begins with my standard lead-in.

I like to use a lecture hall theme, followed by the appearance of the avatar (that’s me). With all of the lectures following with the same format, it creates a stable learning environment.

Using the avatar connects the students to my voice and makes the learning material more approachable for the student.

To be honest, it wasn’t until relatively late in my career that I knew anything about the issues of uterine contractions, outside the context of labor and delivery.

I knew that birth control pills usually made cramps better, but I didn’t really know why. I thought I understood the role of progesterone in the menstrual cycle, but I had never considered the smooth muscle relaxing properties of it.

I was focused on OCP suppression of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, but hadn’t really thought very critically about the deficiencies in that explanation for everything that we knew clinically about the BCPs. Nor had I thought much about how sperm deposited in the vagina could travel so far, so quickly to the end of the fallopian tube, to achieve a pregnancy.

One day, I was sitting at a post graduate conference. One of the speakers described uterine contraction patterns observed ultrasonically, and the story of their discovery. I was fascinated. This physiology explained so many things to me. It was like the sun breaking through.

Remaining a little skeptical, I spent a fair amount of time with Pubmed and discussing the issues with my REI friends before becoming totally convinced.

In the years that followed, I passed on this information on to the residents and medical students, turning it into a brief story that I could inject during teaching rounds or while waiting for a delivery. Later, when I was making up my simulated clerkship, OBGYN Morning Rounds, I decided to include the story, along with some graphics to support the audio.

In making the video, I didn’t actually have any ultrasound video showing the contractions, so instead I used a background graphic with red arrows illustrating the direction of the contractions. This was satisfactory, but if I were to do it again, I’d try to get at least some video clips, running at fast forward, to illustrate the uterine contractions.

Similar to many other lectures, the education is delivered primarily through the audio channel. The video channel supports the audio, providing a visual representation of what I’m discussing.

In creating the visual images to accompany the audio, I always try to consider several issues:

First, I try to keep it simple. The student should be able to quickly grasp the content of the image without spending much brainpower looking it over.

Second, the image should be supportive of the audio, and certainly not in conflict with it.

Third, I usually try to avoid movement, unless the movement is essential to what I’m discussing. In this case, I’d prefer to have had video clips showing the different contraction patterns of the uterus, but I didn’t have them, so I did the best I could without them.

In dealing with bulleted slides, for the slide background, I like to use all black. This is least distracting to the educational process.

For the content, I prefer sparing use of white lettering. I think this helps focus the attention of the student more on the learning and less on entertainment.