Episode 30 - Learning and Applying Medical Knowledge with MD PhD student Alexander Chamessian

11/07/18 • 35 min

This episode was funded by the Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast and gain access to exclusive content, please see our Patreon page.

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Show Notes:

Over the last few months, we have been interviewing researchers who attended the the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). We enjoyed recording these interviews so much that we decided to do another one!

Alex Chamessian first wrote to us about a year ago - almost immediately after we released our first podcast episode. An MD-PhD candidate at Duke, Alex has been passionate about effective learning for years. He started using spaced repetition in 2010 in my first year of medical school, and when he noticed the benefits, he did a deep dive into more evidence-based practices, starting first with a blog, then a book. Alex asked if he could appear on our podcast, but at the time that he was writing, we hadn’t figured out whether - let alone how - we would conduct podcast interviews! A year later, Yana and Alex finally got together over Skype to record this interview.

In our conversation, we discuss the following questions:

Why/how did Alex get interested in learning strategies in medical school, and end up writing a blog and book on the subject?
Do students need to understand the reasons why effective strategies work, or is it enough for them just to experience their effectiveness?
Apart from medical school and classes and exams, how is Alex planning on applying effective learning strategies in his medical practice?
And what about in his PhD - are there strategies also effective for being a successful scholar?

Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rss

Show Notes:

In our conversation, we discuss the following questions:

Why/how did Alex get interested in learning strategies in medical school, and end up writing a blog and book on the subject?
Do students need to understand the reasons why effective strategies work, or is it enough for them just to experience their effectiveness?
Apart from medical school and classes and exams, how is Alex planning on applying effective learning strategies in his medical practice?
And what about in his PhD - are there strategies also effective for being a successful scholar?

Previous Episode

Episode 29 - Developments in Brain Imaging to Foster Learning with Julien Mercier

This episode was funded by The Wellcome Trust, Chartered College of Teaching, and listeners like you. For more details on how to help support our podcast, please see our Patreon page.

Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rss

Show Notes:

This is the ninth and final episode in a series recorded in London! In June 2018 we attended the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction conference (or, more simply, EARLI) for the special interest group on Neuroscience and Education (@EarliSIG22). While there, we recorded live interviews with teachers and researchers.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Julien Mercier, professor at the University of Quebec at Montreal and director of NeuroLab, an educational neuroscience lab. Research in this lab focuses on cognition and affect during learning. This is done by collecting second-by-second (“on-line”) data from learners. The contexts in which these measures are collected include reading, science education, video games, and more applied workplace settings.

Because of the complexity of this type of research, experts from a diverse set of fields are needed to make the project come together. First the physiological data are collected. Then, all the data are integrated into one huge complex system, segmented, and analyzed to look for patterns in reactions. For example, in a study on video gaming, the researchers were interested in what happens when a player is given an action prompt. The researchers collected measures that tap into cognitive load and engagement, and compare the relative activation before and after the prompt was presented.

Through this research, Julien hopes to develop a methodology that will be able to handle much more complex learning situations than those currently considered in neuroscientific research.

Next Episode

Episode 31 - Bite-Size Research on Retrieval Practice and Complex Content

Listening on the web? You can subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes each month! Go to our show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

RSS feed: http://www.learningscientists.org/learning-scientists-podcast/?format=rss

Show Notes:

In our last episode, Yana interviewed Alexander Chamessian, an MD PhD student who has been consistently utilizing evidence-based learning strategies. In this bite-size research episode, Yana follows up with a study on retrieval practice with complex medical information.

In this study by scientists at a department of Health and Kinesiology (1), students taking an exercise physiology re-read or practiced retrieval practice on background texts and journal articles, and then took critical analysis and factual texts. The debate between John Sweller (2) and Jeff Karpicke (3) on whether retrieval practice works with complex materials can be found in this special issue.

The following table shows the phases in the experiment:

Image from Dobson, Linderholm, & Perez (2018)

The main result can be found in this figure:

Image from Dobson, Linderholm, & Perez (2018)

References:

(1) Dobson, J., Linderholm, T., & Perez, J. (2018). Retrieval practice enhances the ability to evaluate complex physiology information. Medical Education, 52, 513-525.

(2) Van Gog, T., & Sweller, J. (2015). Not new, but nearly forgotten: the testing effect decreases or even disappears as the complexity of learning materials increases. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 247-264.

(3) Karpicke, J. D., & Aue, W. R. (2015). The testing effect is alive and well with complex materials. Educational Psychology Review, 27, 317-326.