Abstract
Students learn a great deal when they study course material outside of our classrooms, but we have little hard evidence of what they are actually doing during that time and how it varies over the course of the semester. This exploratory pilot study asked first-year medical students to complete study strategy surveys at the beginning and again at the end of a stand-alone physiology course. Responses to these surveys were then grouped into categories, and analyses were completed using above average and below average final grades in the course. The amount of change that occurred in individual student responses between pre-course and post-course surveys was also calculated. Results found that students with above average course grades were more likely to study with other students, make their own resources, and have lower grade expectations coming into the course than their peers with below average outcomes. Results also indicated that changing fewer study strategies may also be correlated with higher grades. Unfortunately, the sample sizes for this study are quite small, and additional data is unavailable locally due to curricular changes. It is hoped that other researchers may be able to further evaluate these ideas.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all of the students who participated in this research. We would also like to thank Jackie Cullison for all of her assistance in the administration of the surveys and logistics of the study, and Audra Schaefer for her comments on an earlier draft that helped to strengthen the manuscript. We would like to thank Bruce Martin for allowing us to work with his Medical Physiology class and Michael Frisby for his assistance with the statistics. Finally, we would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers, who helped to further strengthen this manuscript.
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Husmann, P.R., Chong, A.J. Plans in Perspective: a Pilot Study of Medical Student Study Strategies in Physiology. Med.Sci.Educ. 29, 683–689 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-019-00769-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-019-00769-3