Impact of Deep Reading in Case-Based Learning in Graduate Physiology Students

Abstract

Introduction: In universities, a traditional lecture style has shown to be less effective in helping students learn compared to a more active approach to teaching and learning. Previous research has stated that passive learning triggers a shift to a more superficial style of learning that is associated with a lower level of cognitive skill. Active learning is defined as activities that students do to construct knowledge and understanding. An active learning concept known as deep reading has been suggested to improve academic performance. In recent studies, deep reading was utilized in graduate science courses and was shown to enhance reading and comprehension skills as well as increasing overall academic ability. Objective: In this study, the aim was to assess how deep reading impacted a student’s self-perception of their understanding of course material in a graduate-level physiology course. Methods: Over a six-week period, 23 graduate physiology students participated in weekly deep reading assignments that correlated with the material taught in class that week. At the end of each week, students filled out an evaluation form indicating how they felt their assigned reading impacted their understanding of the material taught in class. Results: Results indicated that almost 70% of the class agreed that deep reading helped in understanding the course material. Student feedback data showed frequent use of the words “understanding,” “enjoyed,” “relevant,” and “helped.” Students who spent between 0-2 hours per week deep reading gave positive feedback. Individuals who spent more than 2 hours per week indicated negative feedback and perceived that deep reading counteracted their understanding of course material. Conclusion: The data implies that student understanding of material was improved with 0-2 hours of deep reading per week. More than 2 hours of deep reading per week had a countereffect. Excess time spent reading could have caused students to lose sight of the important concepts from the articles and thereby eliciting a negative effect and more confusion. Some, 1-2hrs, seemed to be helpful, however, more had a detrimental effect on learning. Future studies should aim to have more consistency in the difficulty of reading materials between students. Addition of comprehensive reading questions could also be implemented to assess student understanding. Overall, we found in this study that deep reading, when used in moderation, was effective in helping students learn and see real-world application of concepts learned in class This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2023 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.