Improvement of Faculty Lecturing bya Modified Flanders Interaction Analysis

Harold C. Lyon Jr *, Martin Reincke*, Thomas Brendel *, Alexandra Hesse **, Johannes Ring**, Matthias Holzer *, Martin R. Fischer *

* Medical Education Unit, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

** Dean‘s Office, Medical Faculty, Technical University, Munich, Germany

References:[1] Flanders NA, Analyzing teaching behavior, Reading Mass: Addison-Wesley; 1970[2] Flanders NA, Teacher Influence, Pupil Attitudes and Achievement, Washington, DC.: (US Office of Education Research Monograph # 12). U.S. Government Printing office, 1965.[3] Aspy, David N. and Roebuck, Flora N., The Relationship of Teacher-Offered Conditions of Meaning to Behaviors Described by Flanders Interaction Analysis. Education Vol. 95. No 3. pp 216-220.[4] Carkhuff, RR and Berenson BG., Beyond Counseling and Therapy. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc. ;1967.[5] Study participants’ quotes from post-study questionnaire

1. INTRODUCTION

3. METHODS

4. RESULTS

5. CONCLUSIONS

2. BACKGROUND

“This analysis and personal critiqueshowed me for the very first time, what I’ve done right or wrong in the past.”

The two medical faculties in Munich, Germany, Ludwig- Maximilians-University (LMU) and Technical University (TU) have been undergoing dynamic curriculum reform in the past decade resulting in the need for faculty development and improvement of faculty teaching. One major reform has been the replacement of most large, formal lectures with smaller tutorials, seminars and more interactive learning modes of teaching. In this study we focused on the improvement of the teaching in the remaining lectures in an effort to make them more interactive and less passive.

TELL SHOW DO

ReviewOverview

PresentExercise

Summary

Flanders Interaction Analysis: (FIA)The FIA is a tool to diagnose classroom interaction. The system has been used extensively in classroom observation studies. The FIA was one of the primary vehicles for the largest study of effective teaching (200,000 hours of classroom analysis) conducted in 42 US states and seven countries including Germany, where Reinhard Tausch and his wife Anna Marie Tausch corroborated the findings of the larger U.S. Studies.[1] The FIA has been shown to be an effective tool for diagnosing classroom teaching and is a reliable instrument by trained users.[2]

There are ten different categories, that are of interest for the FIA. The rater of the lecture is checking every minute, what is happening in the lecture hall. Previous studies showed that the ratio (I/D) of Indirect responses (items 1-4: Accepts Feelings; Praises or encourages; Accepts or Uses Ideas of Students; and Asks Questions) to Direct responses (items 5-7: Lecturing; Giving Directions; Criticizing) responses, if higher than 0.7 (more Indirect) tends to correlate with more effective teacher outcomes while, when less than 0.4 (more Direct) correlates with less effective teaching outcomes.

“Even if you think, your lectures are

already interactive, you’ll realize through

this analysis and critique, that they can

be much more interactive.” [5]

“What I’ve learned in this study also helped me improve my skills in other fields like research-presentations and speaking in front of committees.”

FIA Modifications

We modified the FIA by adding three more measurements:

• Empathy on a 5-point Likert scale[3].•Case-based teaching on a 5-point Likert scale•Organization of classroom teaching (ROPES[4]):

We stratified 22 self-selected volunteer lecturers from the two universities by teaching experience and randomized them into two matched groups, an experimental group (EG) and a control group (CG). Groups were well matched as prior to intervention no significant differences were found in EG and CG teaching effectiveness criteria. Each lecturer gave the same content lecture in both winter and summer semester. Both lectures of each participant were analyzed with the MFIA but only the EGs were given the feedback intervention We compared student and expert evaluations of the winter MFIA with those of the summer MFIA and compared the results of the EG with the CG.

•MFIA is an economical, reliable intervention to improve quality of faculty lecturing.

•MFIA provides lectures with: … more indirect teaching … more student interactivity … more question-asking … better organization of teaching … more empathy … more case-based teaching•More faculty members are volunteering to improve their lectures with MFIA and feedback critique.•Future studies are planned to see if results for lectures hold up for small seminars and tutorials

•

Lecture 1Winter Semester

Lecture 2Summer Semester

MFIA 1 MFIA 2

FeedbackCritique

Experimental Group:

Lecture 1Winter Semester

Lecture 2Summer Semester

MFIA 1 MFIA 2

Control Group:

FeedbackCritique

FeedbackCritique

Study Design

ROPES: Every cell can be ckecked. Maxium of 15 points can be achieved.

Department Chair, 58 yrs.

Department Chief, 62 yrs.

General Practicioner, 66 yrs.

A B C

FED

% %

Ratio Number

Points

Points

Experimental Group Teaching Effectiveness Improvement in 7 criteria after MFIA InterventionA Significant improvement of I/D Ratio: p = 0,009 D Significant reduction of Teacher Talk: p = 0.003

B Significant increase of Questions asked: p = 0.020 E Significant increase of Student Talk: p = 0.001

C Improvement of ROPES: p = 0.022 F Significant improvement of Empathy: p = 0.000 G Significant improvement in Case-based teaching: p = 0.000Student Evaluations showed significant improvements on the following 9 criteria after MFIA Intervention: empathy, caring about students, question asking, students actively engaged, used student

ideas, learning objectives, used computer-based cases, used live patients, and used case-based examples

Contact: halclyon@yahoo.com