Abstract
BackgroundThere is a dearth of published literature that demonstrates the impact of a Guide to Reading Biomedical English Literature course on new Chinese medical postgraduates. Keeping this gap in mind, the objectives of this study were to assess the factors associated with course effectiveness using the teacher, postgraduate and organizational factors.MethodsThis study was conducted at Nanjing Medical University from December 2014 to December 2015. The participants were 440 new graduate students from different medical specialties. At baseline, each student was assessed for teacher factors, individual factors and organizational factors using a self-administered structured scored anonymous questionnaire. After that, Pearson chi-square analysis was conducted to evaluate the factors that impact teacher factors (knowledge level, teaching style, individualized teaching, logical teaching, heuristic teaching, literature difficulty, bilingual teaching), individual factors (gender, attitude toward studying, previewing literature, English literacy level) and course management (such as teaching objectives and assessment system) on this course. Furthermore, multiple logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the impact of the above factors on our outcome variables (knowledge level, teaching style, individualized teaching, heuristic teaching, study attitude, previewing literature, management).ResultsNearly all of the participants (420 of 440, 95.5%) thought this course was helpful for learning to read scientific literature and understanding scientific research design. Multivariate logistic regression analyses showed that the participants perception of the course as effective was associated with teachers’ high knowledge level (Adjusted Odds Ratio, AOR = 49.673; 95% confidence interval, 95% CI = 4.28, 575.90). In addition, heuristic teaching was found to be significantly associated with a positive teaching effect of teaching (AOR = 12.76; 95% CI = 1.78, 91.64). Furthermore, the participants perception of the course as effective was associated with positive attitude toward studying (AOR = 25.004; 95% CI = 2.51, 249.09). Previewing literature was also associated with course effectiveness (AOR = 0.02; 95% CI = 0.04, 0.11).ConclusionsThis study indicated that the course effectiveness of the Guide for Reading Biomedical English Literature was associated with i) teachers’ knowledge, ii) heuristic teaching, iii) students’ positive attitude, and iv) students’ previewing literature.
Highlights
There is a dearth of published literature that demonstrates the impact of a Guide to Reading Biomedical English Literature course on new Chinese medical postgraduates
Aim We aimed to evaluate the factors that affect the effectiveness of implementing this course with medical postgraduates in China: 1) to estimate the association of teaching effectiveness with teacher, postgraduate and organizational factors; 2) to investigate the influencing factors on effective teaching outcomes of the course; and 3) to identify problems in the course and adjust the teaching plan in the future
Marušić et al.’s study [6] was mainly focused on study skills, such as access to medical literature and bibliographic databases, and taught young academic physicians to write a scientific article; while our work was mainly study the factors associated with course effectiveness from teachers, postgraduates and organizational factors
Summary
There is a dearth of published literature that demonstrates the impact of a Guide to Reading Biomedical English Literature course on new Chinese medical postgraduates. Studies have noted that students who have grown up in non-English speaking countries are always limited by language and professional knowledge in reading English literature, including difficulties in understanding and memory [3, 4]. This difficulty has become a major obstacle for postgraduates’ acquisition of relevant scientific information through reading. Guanling Wu (Nanjing Medical University) established a course called “Guide to Reading Biomedical English Literature” in 2004 This course is designed to instruct each new postgraduate student in mastering how to read scientific literature and obtain effective scientific information from their reading
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