Understanding Medical Student Disengagement from Small Group Learning Activities by Comparing Faculty and Student Perceptions
Authors: Reji Merin , Harris David M. 
Published: June 2021

Small group case‐based learning (SGCBL) makes up a significant amount of curricular time in the medical education at the University of Central Florida. Recently, learner engagement in SGCBL activities within our curriculum has been waning. The purpose of this study was to explore reasons for disengagement and faculty efforts towards SGCBL with the aim to improve design of these small group sessions.

METHODS

Semi‐structured qualitative interviews were done with 15 first‐year medical students (M1) and 14 faculty members that teach to the M1s. Interviews were transcribed. The thematic analysis approach in this study followed a systematic process of review which began with investigators reading the transcripts of interviews multiple times in order to be familiarized with data. Following this, early themes were identified by each investigator and discussed. The preliminary themes found by MR and DH were compared to arrive at larger themes and come up with coding terms. The transcripts were then loaded into the NVivo system and words were keyed in as clusters to identify themes.

RESULTS

The four main themes from this analysis were perception (value) of time, case design, group dynamics, and utility of feedback. For perception of time, M1s expressed concern over educational value of time spent on cases. Faculty perceived this as well as they feel students rush through the cases. As for case design, M1s and faculty felt that cases should be clinically relevant, however M1s and faculty were conflicted over the length of the cases. Faculty felt that case design should focus on improving clinical reasoning, whereas M1s focused on how case design aligns with the course examinations. Most M1s felt that SGCBL activities provided opportunities for learning team dynamics and accountability. Students also felt that group dynamics shaped learning more than the actual content. Faculty perceived the students lacked group dynamics as they felt students adopted a divide and conquer approach to the problems. For feedback, students valued faculty versions of feedback/answers and did not refer to their own efforts. Faculty were variable on how to provide ideal feedback.

DISCUSSION

These data suggest that how students approach SGCBL is complex and has many factors. These include pressure for USMLE Step 1 performance for residency applications. Additionally, students in this generation have grown with sophisticated games, cell phones and computer programs that were not available for most of the faculty teaching. Other things includes excellent external resources outside of curricula that are available for content. In order to maintain learner engagement, many faculty will need to re‐tool themselves to address higher order thinking and communication skills in students as opposed to content delivery.

Support or Funding Information

N/A

This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.