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FEATURE
CONFABULATING METHODS of Education( CME)
Martin Huecker, MD Angela Horn, PhD
“ are men that teach best by not teaching at all.”-Abraham Flexner
The knowledge and skills of medicine require a deep understanding of how we, as humans, students and physicians, learn to learn. We have excelled in grade school, high school, college, medical school and beyond. We could not have achieved so much without understanding how people learn.
Truly gifted teachers make learning fun and effortless. Reread, reread, underline, and highlight. You need a routine, a consistent study area, and an established schedule. Stick with the same material; do not give in to distractions, especially if you are working through a sticking point. Similarly, do not interrupt a lesson before you have finished it. No music in the background while studying, and if you must, it should always be the same music. Studying leads to retention, testing is for assessment. Experts make the best teachers. If a learning method feels clunky and slow, switch to another method. You know yourself and can tell when you have mastered the material. Just put in the time and the information will stick. Intensive week-long board review is the best way ensure retention. Some people just have stronger memory retention. Everyone has a unique learning style. As an educator or mentor or parent, you should praise kids for being intelligent.
We assume you are quite familiar with these axioms. You might not be familiar with the inarguable evidence that they are WRONG! We’ ll review these myths and examine the research that debunks them. But you will not be left empty-handed. Be receptive to the concrete strategies to enhance your clinical skills and to share with the next generation of physicians.
" TRULY GIFTED TEACHERS MAKE LEARNING FUN AND EFFORTLESS."
Many medical students know the false nature of this myth, as they consider the difficulty of studying for board exams. Though it can be fun, learning for maximum retention and application feels difficult, even cumbersome. There exists a“ curious inverse relationship between the ease of retrieval practice and the power of that practice to entrench learning.” One example involved experienced baseball players working on better batting. Practice performance in the group exposed to varied pitch types and speeds lagged behind the group with more organized practice. When it came time for assessment(“ game time”), the players in the more arduous, random pitch group displayed better hitting ability. The varied practice pattern and“ interleaving” related but distinct principles recurs in studies assessing learning.
14 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE