PGY1 Pharmacy Resident
The landscape of education and instructional design is one that is ever in flux. This is not only because educational research is a relatively new development only becoming established within the past two hundred years or so, but because the rapid rise of new technologies continuously affect how we engage with new information. Historically, apart from self-teaching, education has been achieved in formal lecture settings, whether it be large-scale classrooms or individual training. This presents certain challenges, as students may not always be in a mindset conducive to learning when scheduled lectures take place. With the advent of the internet and even more recently with portable and handheld devices, there has been a revolution in the way information is disseminated. Microlearning is a new method of formalized training that combines the benefits of directed teaching from an expert source with the convenience of allowing students to learn on a schedule that is effect for them.
If you have heard of the language learning mobile application Duolingo, you are at least on some level familiar with the idea of microlearning. Information is broken up into “small and understandable fractions,” where “the learning speed is chosen by students themselves.”1 Microlearning contains some key characteristics that make it advantageous.2 Learning is performed is short periods of time that require little from individual sessions. Sessions are narrow in scope and are ideally fun and engaging and presented in a casual and informal way. Microlearning does have its limitations, however. With lessons broken up into small, simple fragments, it is not a conducive method for learning complex skill or processes. Learning is done individually, and relevant practice is still required. And learning still needs to be achieved in a focused manner, with many individuals believing that they can multi-task learning with other requirements, an idea that is not borne out by data. Still the opportunities for implementing microlearning as a new method of teaching are promising.
The possibilities for the utilization of microlearning are promising. One study divided a class of seventh grade students into two groups, one of which received inform in a traditional didactic fashion with large amounts of information being delivered in a short amount of time and the other group received information using microlearning.1 The students received information on the same topics for five weeks and then were evaluated on their learning without prior notification during the sixth week of the study. The traditional learning group passed the evaluation at a rate of 64% while 82% of learners in the microlearning group passed the exam, for an 18% difference between the two groups. This difference is striking, though perhaps highlights one of the disadvantages of microlearning, that its utility may be limited to simple topics and would you to be implemented more strategically for adult learners.
Despite the complexities of healthcare education curricula, this is not to say there is not a role for microlearning for aspiring physicians, pharmacists, and other medical professionals. In fact, many proprietary microlearning platforms for students in the health professions already exist. As of September, 2020, the self-directed learning platform SketchyMedical boasted 30,000 active subscriptions, prompting an injection of outside investment to the tune of $30 million.3 The platform produces short-form animations covering a variety of topics geared towards medical students using story telling and mnemonic devices that allow them to learn information in an easily digestible, self-directed manner. Platforms such as SketchyMedical are contributors to a striking finding by the American Medical Association in 2019: 23.5% of medical students were not attending lectures at all and about 17% “almost never” view video lectures.4 With such a large percentage of students choosing not to engage with the formal education they are paying exorbitant amounts of money for, one might view this as a crisis needing addressing. But in the written Chinese language, the character for “crisis” also contains the character for “opportunity.”
Instead of responding with a knee-jerk reaction to compel students to attend lectures with class credit or punishments of various kinds. Institutions should implement their own microlearning materials to provide students with an alternative form of consuming information. While, of course, this would be no substitute for the entire curriculum, it seems perfectly poised for basic information that provides the foundation of learning throughout school. Often, conversations around new technologies are premised on whether or not they will supplant existing methods entirely. But this argument does not consider that instructional design is not zero-sum; beginning to utilize a new system does not preclude us from continuing to use the old. No student is identical to another and different methods will work best for different people and will even work best for the same person at different times. Embracing new methods allows us to further individualize learning and maximize educational outcomes.
References:
1. Sirwan Mohammed G, Wakil K, Sirwan Nawroly S. The Effectiveness of Microlearning to Improve Students’ Learning Ability. Int J Educ Res Rev. 2018;3(3):32-38. doi:10.24331/ijere.415824
2. Jomah O, Masoud AK, Kishore XP, Aurelia S. Micro Learning: A Modernized Education System. 2016;7(1):8.
3. This Test Prep Service has a Cult Following Among Med Students. Soon it Will Have an Animation Studio. dot.LA. Published September 24, 2020. Accessed October 3, 2021. https://dot.la/sketchy-medical-2647784595.html
4. Why some medical students are cutting class to get ahead. American Medical Association. Accessed October 3, 2021. https://www.ama-assn.org/residents-students/medical-school-life/why-some-medical-students-are-cutting-class-get-ahead
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