Role of IAMSE in the Council of Academic Societies (CAS): Report from the Spring 2005 CAS Meeting

Research in psychology and education with students at the pre-college level suggests that guided discovery learning is superior to the less-structured approach of pure discovery learning in promoting learning and knowledge transfer. In medical education, guided discovery learning is a learner-centered approach that combines didactic instruction with more studentcentered and task-based approaches. Key features are (1) a framework for student learning, (2) student responsibility for exploring content needed for understanding, (3) study guides provided, and (4) application to clinical or experimental problems. This paper describes an example from an interdisciplinary neurobiology course for first-year medical students. Following didactic presentations of nervous system structure and function, we present an introduction to the clinical case, an outline of the neurological examination, and assignment of a written report. Study resources are provided. This is followed several days later by the presentation of a videotaped case of a patient admitted with a stroke one year ago, with a neurologist taking the history and reviewing the examination at admission. Each segment was followed by the instructor, a member of the neurology faculty, questioning students and inviting discussion on differential diagnosis based upon their knowledge of neuroanatomy and neurophysiology. Students were asked to evaluate this component of the course on a 1-6 Likert rating scale (1=strongly agree to 6=strongly disagree). 79 to 88% strongly agreed or agreed that it “increased my knowledge of neurobiology”, “increased my motivation to learn neurobiology”, “increased my ability to apply neurobiology to clinical problems”, and “improved my understanding, motivation to learn, and/or ability to apply neurobiology more than a typical lecture”. An objective performance measure is cited as an approach to the effect on learning. The results suggest that the clinical case presented by means of guided discovery learning serves to focus on real problems and adds relevance and motivation to mastery of related basic science information.