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Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills

INTRODUCTION: Evidence of the benefit of distributed instruction and interleaved practice comes from studies using simple materials (e. g. word pairs). Furthermore, there is currently no evidence of the combined impact of these strategies in undergraduate medical education. The present study evaluat...

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Autores principales: Monteiro, Sandra, Melvin, Lindsay, Manolakos, Joshua, Patel, Ameen, Norman, Geoffrey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Bohn Stafleu van Loghum 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5542896/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28744821
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40037-017-0365-x
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author Monteiro, Sandra
Melvin, Lindsay
Manolakos, Joshua
Patel, Ameen
Norman, Geoffrey
author_facet Monteiro, Sandra
Melvin, Lindsay
Manolakos, Joshua
Patel, Ameen
Norman, Geoffrey
author_sort Monteiro, Sandra
collection PubMed
description INTRODUCTION: Evidence of the benefit of distributed instruction and interleaved practice comes from studies using simple materials (e. g. word pairs). Furthermore, there is currently no evidence of the combined impact of these strategies in undergraduate medical education. The present study evaluated the impact of varying both instruction and practice schedules for the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills. METHODS: We conducted a 2 × 2 factorial study with two levels of instruction (massed and distributed) and two levels of practice (interleaved and blocked). A three-module introductory course in ECG interpretation was delivered to 80 first year medical undergraduate students. Students were assigned to one of four Instruction-Practice conditions: Massed-Interleaved, Massed-Blocked, Distributed-Interleaved and Distributed-Blocked. Learning was evaluated by a multiple choice quiz at the end of each module and a final multiple choice quiz at the end of the course. RESULTS: End of module mean scores showed that distributed instruction was consistently superior to massed instruction (52% vs 42%, p < 0.01). However, there was no effect of practice and no interaction between teaching and practice methods. The delayed final test scores revealed an advantage for blocked over mixed practice (34% vs 24%, p < 0.05) and distributed over massed instruction (34% vs 24%, p < 0.05). DISCUSSION: These results suggest that these popular strategies may have varying effects with complex learning materials. Further research is required to understand how these strategies affect the learning of simple and very complex skills. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi: 10.1007/s40037-017-0365-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-55428962017-08-17 Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills Monteiro, Sandra Melvin, Lindsay Manolakos, Joshua Patel, Ameen Norman, Geoffrey Perspect Med Educ Original Article INTRODUCTION: Evidence of the benefit of distributed instruction and interleaved practice comes from studies using simple materials (e. g. word pairs). Furthermore, there is currently no evidence of the combined impact of these strategies in undergraduate medical education. The present study evaluated the impact of varying both instruction and practice schedules for the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills. METHODS: We conducted a 2 × 2 factorial study with two levels of instruction (massed and distributed) and two levels of practice (interleaved and blocked). A three-module introductory course in ECG interpretation was delivered to 80 first year medical undergraduate students. Students were assigned to one of four Instruction-Practice conditions: Massed-Interleaved, Massed-Blocked, Distributed-Interleaved and Distributed-Blocked. Learning was evaluated by a multiple choice quiz at the end of each module and a final multiple choice quiz at the end of the course. RESULTS: End of module mean scores showed that distributed instruction was consistently superior to massed instruction (52% vs 42%, p < 0.01). However, there was no effect of practice and no interaction between teaching and practice methods. The delayed final test scores revealed an advantage for blocked over mixed practice (34% vs 24%, p < 0.05) and distributed over massed instruction (34% vs 24%, p < 0.05). DISCUSSION: These results suggest that these popular strategies may have varying effects with complex learning materials. Further research is required to understand how these strategies affect the learning of simple and very complex skills. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi: 10.1007/s40037-017-0365-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Bohn Stafleu van Loghum 2017-07-25 2017-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5542896/ /pubmed/28744821 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40037-017-0365-x Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Article
Monteiro, Sandra
Melvin, Lindsay
Manolakos, Joshua
Patel, Ameen
Norman, Geoffrey
Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills
title Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills
title_full Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills
title_fullStr Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills
title_full_unstemmed Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills
title_short Evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ECG interpretation skills
title_sort evaluating the effect of instruction and practice schedule on the acquisition of ecg interpretation skills
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5542896/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28744821
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40037-017-0365-x
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