Surgical Service, Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02130, USA.
J Urol. 2010 Feb;183(2):678-81. doi: 10.1016/j.juro.2009.10.005.
Spaced education is a novel form of online education that harnesses the 2 psychology research findings of spacing and testing effects. Spaced education is delivered by daily emails containing clinically relevant multiple choice questions. To take advantage of the spacing effect the questions are repeated at fixed intervals for a fixed number of repetitions. An adaptive spaced education system was developed to customize spacing intervals and the number of repetitions based on learner knowledge level. To determine whether this system improves learning efficiency I performed a randomized trial to compare the learning efficiency of adaptive vs nonadaptive spaced education systems among surgery students at 2 medical schools.
A total of 62 year 3 students were randomized to identical course content in adaptive or nonadaptive spaced education formats. The course consisted of 40 validated, spaced education items on the 4 urology topics benign prostatic hyperplasia, erectile dysfunction, prostate cancer and prostate specific antigen screening. The nonadaptive cohort received daily emails containing 2 questions with a linear review of the material 20 days after initial presentation. The adaptive cohort received daily emails via an adaptive algorithm that limited the repetition of mastered content. Each cohort completed a validated end of course test.
The adaptive cohort answered significantly fewer spaced education items than the nonadaptive cohort (p = 0.001) but achieved comparable end of course test scores (p = 0.37). The adaptive algorithm increased learning efficiency by 38%.
Adaptive spaced education boosts learning efficiency.
间隔式教育是一种新颖的在线教育形式，利用了 2 项心理学研究发现，即间隔效应和测试效应。间隔式教育通过每日发送包含临床相关多项选择题的电子邮件来实施。为了利用间隔效应，问题会在固定的间隔时间内重复出现，重复的次数是固定的。我们开发了一种自适应间隔式教育系统，可以根据学习者的知识水平，自定义间隔时间和重复次数。为了确定这种系统是否能提高学习效率，我们进行了一项随机试验，比较了 2 所医学院的外科学生在自适应和非自适应间隔式教育系统中的学习效率。
共有 62 名三年级学生被随机分配到自适应或非自适应间隔式教育模式的相同课程内容中。该课程包含 40 个经过验证的、间隔式教育项目，涵盖了 4 个泌尿科主题，即良性前列腺增生、勃起功能障碍、前列腺癌和前列腺特异性抗原筛查。非自适应组每天收到包含 2 个问题的电子邮件，在初次呈现 20 天后进行线性复习。自适应组通过自适应算法每天接收电子邮件，该算法限制了已掌握内容的重复次数。每个组都完成了一个经过验证的课程结束测试。
自适应组回答的间隔式教育项目明显少于非自适应组（p = 0.001），但取得了相当的课程结束测试成绩（p = 0.37）。自适应算法将学习效率提高了 38%。
自适应间隔式教育提高了学习效率。
