Anatomy Performance and Strategic, Deep, and Surface Approaches Among Physician Assistant Students

Abstract

Background Within anatomy education, relationships between learning approach and academic performance have been explored to understand programmatic curricula. Learning approaches have an impact on assessment outcomes, long-term retention of material, and overall academic success. Entwistle (2013) developed the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory (RASI), a 52-item inventory assessing student approaches to studying in educational contexts, classifying studying preferences as strategic, deep, or surface. Objective The study aims to address whether there is a correlation between learning approach and final anatomy grade in a sample of physician assistant students. While other studies have examined the relationship between learning approach and other outcome measures, few have investigated allied health students in the United States with anatomy grade as the learning outcome. It was hypothesized that students with a dominant preference for the strategic approach would have higher anatomy grades than those who prefer deep or surface approaches. Methods First year students enrolled in a physician assistant program were invited to participate in the study two weeks following the completion of a four-credit gross anatomy course. Students were asked to complete the RASI in Qualtrics. Cronbach's alpha of the three scales were within good ranges of internal consistency: 0.81 (strategic approach), 0.82 (deep approach), and 0.83 (surface approach). Descriptive statistics characterized students’ dominant approach to learning anatomy. A one-way analysis of variance examined whether there was a difference in learning approach and anatomy grade, and whether mean anatomy grade differed by the student's dominant approach. Pearson's correlation coefficient evaluated the relationship between anatomy grade and learning approach. Analyses were performed using GraphPad Prism and significance level was set at p < 0.05. Results A total of 48 students were invited to participate and 36 completed the RASI (75% response rate). Two students exhibited an equal preference for two learning approaches and were omitted from the analysis. There were no statistical differences in mean anatomy grade and learning approach (F = 0.2756, p = 0.7609), or mean anatomy grade and learning approach by sex (F = 0.9138, p = 0.4660). Anatomy grade was not correlated with learning approach for the strategic approach (r = -0.05517, p = 0.7493), deep approach (r = 0.08033, p = 0.6414), or surface approach (r = -0.1462, p = 0.3947). Conclusion The hypothesis that dominant use of the strategic approach would positively correlate with anatomy grade was not supported. This may be due to a low variability in mean grades. A limitation of this study is the self-reported nature of the inventory, and student answers may not reflect how they truly studied. Additionally, a metacognition presentation was given following their first set of exams, which may have promoted more effective study strategies for the duration of the course. Future studies will compare the learning approaches of physician assistant and physical therapy students, and seek to identify at-risk students before culmination of the anatomy course.