Determining Impact of Learning Environment on Student Engagement, Bloom's Higher Order Skill Proficiency, and Exam Performance of First Year Medical Students

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to determine if levels of student engagement, higher order skill proficiency, and knowledge acquisition demonstrated by medical students would differ when completing the same course in three diverse learning environments. Following IRB approval, 54 first year medical students registered at the same medical school, but attending class at three different campus centers were enrolled in the study. All participants were completing a Medical Physiology course that utilized the same learning objectives but incorporated diverse methodologies (percent of class devoted to active learning strategies), course format (6 week block versus 17 week semester), and student attendance rates. Students completed a validated survey of student engagement (SSE), a proctored online problem‐based assessment of higher order skill proficiency (Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+) (http://cae.org), and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Physiology subject exam. Results indicated levels of engagement were lower than expected when compared to published values for graduate students. Higher order skill proficiency assessed by CLA+ was significantly higher than values reported for college seniors nationally. Importantly, there were no significant differences between campus sites for any of the variables assessed. Surprisingly, assessed higher order skill proficiency (CLA+) offered no prediction of performance on NBME as there were no significant correlations between the SSE and CLA+, or between CLA+ and NBME scores. These data indicate that although first year medical students may not perceive themselves as highly engaged, they are adept in using higher order skills and excel in meeting course objectives regardless of learning environment.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.