Active Learning Among Health Professions' Educators: Perceptions, Barriers, and Use.

Introduction: Active learning engages students in the learning process through meaningful learning activities. Despite evidence that active learning can improve student's comprehension and problem solving, many educators remain reluctant to adopt it. The goal of this study was to explore health professions' educators' perceptions of active learning and identify implementation barriers. Materials and Methods: We developed a 25-question survey based on the Miller and Metz "perceptions of active learning" survey. We added 12 single-response demographics questions to the original 13 survey questions. Results: One hundred three respondents completed the survey. We found positive perceptions of active learning significantly correlated with gender, rank, teaching FTE, and full-time employment. The use of specific active learning modalities significantly correlated with gender, terminal degree, institutional appointment, academic rank, and role. Lack of time to develop materials and lack of class time were the most common personal barriers identified, while being lecture-accustomed and lack of training were the most common perceived barriers to the implementation of active learning by their peers. Conclusion: Despite overwhelmingly positive perceptions of active learning among US health professions' educators and desire to incorporate it, a gap still exists between institutional and educators' support of active learning due to implementation barriers for resource-intensive active learning.

A mixed method analysis of student satisfaction with active learning techniques in an online graduate anatomy course: Consideration of demographics and previous course enrollment.

Online learning has become an essential part of mainstream higher education. With increasing enrollments in online anatomy courses, a better understanding of effective teaching techniques for the online learning environment is critical. Active learning has previously shown many benefits in face-to-face anatomy courses, including increases in student satisfaction. Currently, no research has measured student satisfaction with active learning techniques implemented in an online graduate anatomy course. This study compares student satisfaction across four different active learning techniques (jigsaw, team-learning module, concept mapping, and question constructing), with consideration of demographics and previous enrollment in anatomy and/or online courses. Survey questions consisted of Likert-style, multiple-choice, ranking, and open-ended questions that asked students to indicate their level of satisfaction with the active learning techniques. One hundred seventy Medical Science master's students completed the online anatomy course and all seven surveys. Results showed that students were significantly more satisfied with question constructing and jigsaw than with concept mapping and team-learning module. Additionally, historically excluded groups (underrepresented racial minorities) were generally more satisfied with active learning than non-minority groups. Age, gender, and previous experience with anatomy did not influence the level of satisfaction. However, students with a higher-grade point average (GPA), those with only a bachelor's degree, and those with no previous online course experience were more satisfied with active learning than students who had a lower GPA, those holding a graduate/professional degree, and those with previous online course experience. Cumulatively, these findings support the beneficial use of active learning in online anatomy courses.

A Tool for Evaluating Session-Level Integration in Medical Education.

Integration in medical education is generally defined as a multidisciplinary approach to the delivery of the basic and applied sciences. In medical education, the number of integrated curricula reported has steadily increased, yet the degree of integration often varies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a tool for medical educators to assess and improve the level of trans-disciplinary integration within an individual academic session. The Session Integration Tool (SIT) is an analytic, developmental rubric that allows the user to assess session-level integration given three criteria: development, delivery, and outcomes. To evaluate the tool, participants utilized the SIT to assess two exemplar case studies, and then their own educational session. A survey was administered to assess user satisfaction along with the instrument's usefulness and impact on practice. Statistical analysis demonstrated a significant difference between user scores of the exemplar case studies for each paired set of criteria (p < 0.000) and for total scores (p = 0.043). Users also successfully used the instrument to assess their own session. The SIT was highly rated by users in terms of satisfaction, usefulness, and impact on practice, with average scores for each category ranging from agree to strongly agree. The SIT has statistical validity in its ability to discriminate between varied levels of integration. Users found the SIT to be useful and impactful for medical education practice and believe it to support peer- and self-assessment of curricular integration. The SIT is a useful, evidence-based, theory grounded tool for assessing session-level integration.