Engagement and Higher Order Skill Proficiency of First and Second Year Medical Students: A Comparison between IUSM's Legacy and Reformed Curricula

Abstract

A large, multicampus, public medical school underwent curricular renewal emphasizing a student‐centered approach with 50% of all course contact time devoted to active learning. Determining the impact of active learning on student engagement and higher order skill (HOS) proficiency was the primary aim of this study. The study compared levels of engagement and HOS between 1) students participating in the legacy curriculum (LC) to those in the renewed curriculum (RC); 2) students in their first year (MS1) of medical school to their second year (MS2). Engagement was determined using a validated Survey of Student Engagement (Ahlfeldt, 2005). HOS proficiency was assessed using the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), professionally developed and validated by the Council for Aid to Education (https://cae.org/flagship‐assessments‐cla‐cwra/cla/). Results indicated that MS1 students in the RC demonstrated significantly higher engagement than LC students (39.0±7.0 vs 36.3±5.3), and continued to increase engagement significantly from MS1 to MS2 (40.8±5.3). However, there were no differences in HOS proficiency when comparing RC to LC, or MS1 to MS2. Interestingly, RC MS1 students in the lowest HOS quartile (1688.8±53.1) demonstrated significantly increased HOS when re‐tested during MS2 (1809.5±86.8). This phenomenon was not seen in LC students. Implementation of RC resulted in higher levels of student engagement than LC, but no differences in HOS were found. These results may be explained by a “ceiling” effect present in this group of highly developed learners.Support or Funding InformationNAThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.