Greville W James, Dymond Simon, Newton Philip M
Department of Psychology, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom.
J Educ Eval Health Prof. 2016 Sep 13;13:32. doi: 10.3352/jeehp.2016.13.32. eCollection 2016.
Esoteric jargon and technical language are potential barriers to the teaching of science and medicine. Effective teaching strategies which address these barriers are desirable. Here, we created and evaluated the effectiveness of stand-alone 'equivalence-based instruction' (EBI) learning resources wherein the teaching of a small number of direct relationships between stimuli (e.g., anatomical regions, their function, and pathology) results in the learning of higher numbers of untaught relationships.
We used a pre and post test design to assess students' learning of the relations. Resources were evaluated by students for perceived usefulness and confidence in the topic. Three versions of the resources were designed, to explore learning parameters such as the number of stimulus classes and the number of relationships within these classes.
We show that use of EBI resulted in demonstrable learning of material that had not been directly taught. The resources were well received by students, even when the quantity of material to be learned was high. There was a strong desire for more EBI-based teaching. The findings are discussed in the context of an ongoing debate surrounding 'rote' vs. 'deep' learning, and the need to balance this debate with considerations of cognitive load and esoteric jargon routinely encountered during the study of medicine.
These standalone EBI resources were an effective, efficient and well-received method for teaching neuroanatomy to medical students. The approach may be of benefit to other subjects with abundant technical jargon, science and other areas of medicine.
晦涩的行话和专业术语是科学和医学教学中的潜在障碍。需要有效的教学策略来克服这些障碍。在此，我们创建并评估了独立的“基于等价关系的教学”（EBI）学习资源的有效性，其中对少量刺激之间的直接关系（如解剖区域、其功能和病理学）进行教学，可促使学生学习更多未讲授的关系。
我们采用前后测试设计来评估学生对这些关系的学习情况。学生对资源的实用性和对该主题的信心进行了评估。设计了三个版本的资源，以探索学习参数，如刺激类别的数量以及这些类别中的关系数量。
我们表明，使用EBI可使学生对未直接讲授的材料有明显的学习效果。即使要学习的材料数量很多，这些资源也受到了学生的好评。学生强烈希望有更多基于EBI的教学。我们在围绕“死记硬背”与“深度学习”的持续辩论背景下讨论了这些发现，以及在医学学习过程中平衡这一辩论与对认知负荷和晦涩行话的考虑的必要性。
这些独立的EBI资源是向医学生教授神经解剖学的一种有效、高效且受欢迎的方法。该方法可能对其他有大量专业术语的学科、科学以及医学的其他领域有益。
