Teaching Research Design and Practice One Bite at a Time in the MT/CLS Curriculum

Abstract

The curriculum for clinical laboratory sciences (CLS) majors is tightly packed with basic and applied science, math, education, and management courses. In the past few years, clinical laboratory science program directors have been charged with adding a component on research to comply with the new #9B8 of the standards that programs must meet to pass accreditation by the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences (now CLSI). The standard reads: “the CLS/MT will possess knowledge, skills and relevant experiences in research design/practice sufficient to evaluate published studies as an informed consumer.” 1 Graduate and professional schools spend years teaching their students how to evaluate research. How can CLS students pick it up as an add-on? This is akin to the riddle: “how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” In the first bite, establish what you want the student be able to do with the new skills: the expected student learning outcomes (SLOs). For the second bite, design a series of research experiences that can be integrated into the established curriculum. In the third bite, measure student success at meeting the SLOs from both the instructor’s and student’s perspectives. For the fourth bite, assess the success of the project in its entirety and make plans to improve the process. These steps should sound familiar. They are plan, implement, assess, and improve. In a clinical laboratory, the implementation of a plan like this happens over a long period of time. In the CLS curriculum, it should also happen over time. What follows is a case study on how NAACLS standard #9B8 Research Design has been integrated into the clinical laboratory science curriculum at the University of West Florida in an active learning model embedded in core CLS courses, with an increasing level of student engagement and responsibility. The comprehensive plan also satisfies a component of the quality enhancement plan (QEP) of the university itself, which calls for a written plan for improvement in student skills of content, communication, project management, and critical thinking.