Virginia Research Day 2021

Student Research Educational

07 Learning to Thrive - Helping Students Transition to and Succeed in Medical School

Caitlyn Martin, OMS II; Jeni McGlauflin; Scott Severance, PhD Corresponding author: cmartin117@liberty.edu

Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine

Medical school covers a great deal of information that must be learned in a short time period and retained for future years. Many students entering medical school struggle to handle the volume of material that is taught. In addition, students struggle to learn the material versus memorize the material for an exam. An article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences linked active learning to improve student performance; furthermore, a research article in the American Psychological Association, indicated the use of spaced repetition and active recall increases retention of material. A study published in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine suggested that teaching medical students early in their medical education how to learn actively, practice recall, and incorporate spaced repetition will allow medical students to learn more efficiently. To study how to aid medical students to adjust to this change in volume and the need for retention, the Learning to Thrive program was developed. Learning to Thrive is a series of eleven sessions which are designed to teach first-year medical students

methods and skills of how to learn. The sessions were presented by second-year medical students in order to make the information presented practical and relevant. Following each session, a short handout of tips for learning will be given to drive home the main point of the session. To gauge how effective the program is at helping medical students learn how to learn, attendees were asked to complete a short survey following each session. The survey was used to track student attendance, determine how beneficial the student found the sessions, and ascertain if the student intended to apply the information learned in the session to their own learning practices. If students attended ten to eleven out of the eleven Learning to Thrive sessions, it is expected that they will develop a learning system faster, become more efficient with their learning, prioritize material more effectively, and learn in group settings better than students who attended fewer sessions. Furthermore, students who attended more sessions are predicted

to perform better in classes and to become more involved in outside activities as the year progresses. A total of 40 first-year students (out of 165) participated in 10 out of 11 sessions. Surveys are currently being analyzed for trends. We expect to have a better understanding of the survey results at the research day, but some data will be incomplete due to the fact that grades and activities will not be collected and analyzed until the end of the school year in May of 2021. There will be a follow-up survey at the end of the school year to learn if the Learning to Thrive sessions benefited students in the long run and if the students who participated were involved in more extra- curricular activities than students who attended fewer sessions. De-identified grades be used to determine if performance of students who attended the sessions was better than the performance of students who did not attend the sessions.

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