Your Active Learning Instruction as Educational Research Laboratory

Patricia S. O’Sullivan, EdDUniversity of California, San FranciscoDirector of Educational Research and Faculty Development

patricia.osullivan@ucsf.edu

My Recent Laboratory

Can We implement Team-based Learning?

How effective is TBL when students have limited access to resources needed to prepare them for an IRAT?

How effective is TBL across professions?

What questions do you have about the increased emphasis on active

learning in your instruction?

• Please discuss this in pairs.

• What are some of your questions?

Overview

• Identify topics in active learning educational research

• Review educational scholarship

• Review educational research process

• Identify resources to support educational research laboratory

What is the difference between these three points?

• Excellent teaching

• Scholarly teaching

• Scholarship of teaching and learning

Excellence and Scholarship

Criteria Teaching Excellence

Scholarly Teaching

Scholarship of Teaching

Quantity & Quality

Builds on Field

Public

Peer Review

Contributes to Field

What are the Steps in Educational Research?

• Refine the study question– Literature review– Problem Statement– Conceptual Framework– Purpose of this study

Beckman& Cook (2007) Developing scholarly projects in education: A primer for medical teachers. Medical Teacher, 29, 210-218.

What are the Steps in Educational Research?

• Identify Design and Methods– Experimental– Observational– Qualitative – Systematic Reviews– Validity

What are the Steps in Educational Research?

• Select Outcomes– Outcome– Outcome Methods– Instruments

Kirkpatrick’s Levels of Outcomes

Satisfaction, preference

Knowledge, skills, attitudes

Impact on practice

Impact on clients

Why Studies do Not Get Published1- Inappropriate, incomplete, or insufficiently described statistics2- Over-interpretation of the results3- Inappropriate, sub-optimal, insufficiently described instrument4- Sample too small or biased5- Text difficult to follow, to understand6- Insufficient or incomplete problem statement7- Insufficient data presented8- Inaccurate or inconsistent data reported9- Inadequate, incomplete, inaccurate, or outdated literature10- Title not representative of study

Bordage, G. Acad Med, 2001, 76:889-896

Structures that Help

• Librarians!– Rudolph Matas Library http://medlib.tulane.edu– Medline, ERIC, Psychinfo, CINAHL, Cochrane,

BEME– saving and retrieving searches, setting up auto-

alerts for journal table of contents or for newly published citations

– Citation management tools – Web of Science

More Structures

• Works in Progress Forum

• UCSF Weekly ESCape Conference

www.medschool.ucsf.edu/edresearch/escape/

More Structures

• Know your journals• Why would you choose:

– Academic Medicine– Teaching and Learning in Medicine– Medical Education– Medical Teacher– Advances in Health Sciences Education– Clinical Teacher– J. of the Inter. Assoc. of Med Educators– Medical Education On-line– BMC Medical Education

More Structures

• First Steps– MedEdPortal

www.aamc.org/mededportal – Really Good Stuff

www.mededuc.com/submitting/guidelines_for_author.pdf

– Southern Group on Educational Affairs (SGEA)

most recent meeting hosted by Tulane!

www.aamc.org/members/gea/regions/sgea/start.htm

Latest Thinking

• Most of the problems we want to solve require multiple disciplines

• Collaborators– Think outside of department– Think outside of the discipline of medicine– Within medical education recognize the diverse

frameworks, perspectives, methods different educators can offer

– Consider themes that cut across disciplines: • patient safety

Summary

• Generate questions• Refine questions• Chose a design• Chose outcomes• Find collaborators• Use your support systems to improve your

research (before you do it)• Try for some early successes

Thank you!