Instructional Strategies to Manage Cognitive Load in Orthodontics

Saad Asad

doi:10.21649/akemu.v22i1.794

Abstract

AbstractIntroduction: Medical Education has recently taken its position in Health professional education, however still it is not very popular in Dentistry, though professional are working hard to apply its principals. In the recent past Orthodontic education has been revolutionized and instructional strategies and designs to reduce the cognitive load and improve learner’s germane load have been employed. However literature discusses educationist`s perspective while student`s perspective regarding this have not been explored much. Aim of this study is to assess student`s perspective about different instructional strategies discussed through examples used to manage cognitive load in Orthodontic Education.Materials and Method: The study was conducted through a 14 instrument questionnaire on a sample consisted of Sixty Six final year BDS students (12 males and 44 females) from University College of Dentistry, The University of Lahore.Results: Student`s perspective through orthodontic examples for instructional strategies to manage cognitive load was assessed. Dental students reported positively to all questions in the questionnaire except the question regarding Goal free principle.Results: Different instructional strategies to reduce extrinsic load, manage intrinsic load and optimize germane load through examples from orthodontic syllabi have been given.Conclusion: Student`s perspective as assessed thro-ugh questionnaire is mostly in accordance with the literature, except for goal free principle where only 25.75% student responded that this instructional strategy will improve learning.

Highlights

Medical Education has recently taken its position in Health professional education, still it is not very popular in Dentistry, though professional are working hard to apply its principals
Students perspective regarding orthodontic examples for instructional strategies to manage cognitive load has been discussed in table 1
For Example we can manage intrinsic load by discussing paper-based patient cases at the commencement of the program to scenarios using mannequins and to the real patients. 59.09% of the students responded positively to the question related to this principle which is in accordance to what is reported in literature.[1,6,9,10,16,17]

Summary

Introduction

Medical Education has recently taken its position in Health professional education, still it is not very popular in Dentistry, though professional are working hard to apply its principals. In the recent past Orthodontic education has been revolutionized and instructional strategies and designs to reduce the cognitive load and improve learner’s germane load have been employed. Aim of this study is to assess students perspective about different instructional strategies discussed through examples used to manage cognitive load in Orthodontic Education. Results: Students perspective through orthodontic examples for instructional strategies to manage cognitive load was assessed. Rather than didactic lectures there is a blend of interactive lectures, small group teaching, demonstrations and work based teaching All of these strategies mend to reduce the cognitive load of the subject and tend to improve the student learning. Managing cognitive load for appropriate student learning is pivotal in an educational setup; it is important to understand applications of Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) in medical education in general and in orthodontics specially.[1]. Tasks can range from low element interactivity to high element interactivity for example, Visual Memory: Eyes

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion