51 - Separating Process and Content Improves the Learner Experience in Basic Science Laboratories

Poster Board Number: 51
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Abstract Body : At the Duke University School of Medicine, the pre-clinical curriculum offers students the opportunity to engage in laboratory events for several different basic science disciplines (e.g., gross anatomy, histology, neurology, pathology). During these lab events, students follow prescribed instructions (the “lab manual”) to achieve a set of event-specific learning objectives. As students spend much of their class time in lab events, it is important to ensure that students are learning as efficiently as possible.
Lab events require students to do two things concurrently: 1) follow lab procedures and 2) synthesize content. While these two requirements can work synergistically, we were interested in how the format of the lab manual might impact the student learning experience. To address this question, we consciously redesigned the histology lab manual into a slide-based format that separated lab process from the supporting content. Our redesign had three additional objectives: to “chunk” supporting information as much as possible, to highlight connections with other basic sciences disciplines (e.g., anatomy, embryology), and to incorporate formative assessments into the lab. Importantly, the redesign did not involve creating additional content, just restructuring and reformatting existing material.
We asked two distinct populations of learners to complete the lab – 13 graduate students experiencing the lab content for the first time and 11 first-year medical students revisiting the lab content. Upon completion, the learners completed a survey that evaluated three different aspects of their experience (engagement with material, comprehension of material, motivation to complete lab) using 5-point Likert scale. The survey also included an open-ended response for narrative comments.
As indicated by survey responses, learners had a positive reaction to the redesigned lab manual. Among the three aspects we surveyed, no learner reported a negative experience. 67% of learners (16 of 24) reported that the redesigned lab manual “greatly increased” both their engagement with and their comprehension of the lab material; the remaining 33% (8 of 24) reported the redesigned lab manual “slightly increased” their engagement with and their comprehension of the lab material. The redesigned lab manual also generally increased learners’ motivation in lab, with 16 students reporting a large increase, 6 reporting a small increase, and 2 reporting no change in motivation. Finally, all narrative comments about the lab manual were positive.
Overall, separating process from content in the histology lab manual seems to have substantially improved the learning experience. Narrative comments provided by students suggested the reformatting made the content clearer and more accessible. This outcome was particularly pronounced among the first-time learners, as 11 of the 13 graduate students reported the redesign greatly increased their comprehension of the lab content. Student comments also alerted us to potential benefits of making the lab manual more compatible with other productivity software, including notetaking and indexing applications, that would further amplify positive outcomes for learners. The implications of this study could be easily applied to other basic science courses with a laboratory component.