Resource Utilization Among Students in Different Professional Programs Enrolled in the Same Human Physiology Course and its Correlation to Exam Performance
Authors: LePard Kathy , Skok Christopher J , Sondgeroth Korie 
Published: November 2023

Some courses administrated by Physiology faculty offer both video recordings of the lecture and pdfs of the PowerPoint (PP) presentation used during the lecture as resources for learning. The aim of this project is to compare how many times students in 4 different programs enrolled in the same College of Health Sciences Human Physiology course accessed these videos and PP pdfs to determine which resource they preferred, and if frequency of resource access was correlated with performance on exams. Blackboard tracked student access by item and day for the following systems: Renal Acid‐Base (10 lectures), Endocrine (7 lectures), Reproduction (5 lectures) and Gastrointestinal (8 lectures). Access data for each video, PP pdf, and student (n=237) was downloaded, de‐identified, collated, and statistically analyzed by GLM Univariant with factors of resource (video or PP pdf), program [Physician Assistant (PA), Physical Therapy (PT), Master in Biomedical Sciences (MBS), Master of Arts in Biomedical Sciences (MABS)], individual student, and lecture (1–30) using SPSS with significance p<0.05 (IRB #2894). Data are expressed as number of times students accessed the resource divided by the number of days the resource was available until the unit exam (hits per day, mean±SEM).

Results

Students accessed PP pdfs about 10% more frequently than videos [Main effect: PP (n=6,162), 0.51±0.01*; Video (n=7,110), 0.461±0.01; *p<0.001], but access was dependent on the lecture [Interaction: Resource*Lecture, F(25;13,048)=7.905; p<0.001] with access to Reproduction videos (range: 0.16–0.26) about 50% less than PP pdfs (0.49±0.03). Students in PT and MBS accessed all resources about 10–20% more frequently than students in the other programs, with PA students having the lowest rate of access [Main effect: PT (n=2,912), 0.53±0.01a; PA (n=4,704), 0.43±0.01b; MABS (n=3,976), 0.49±0.01c; MBS (n=1,680), 0.53±0.02a; p<0.001). Again, program access varied by lecture [Interaction: Program*Lecture, F(87;13,048)=1.668; p<0.001] with Endocrine resources accessed most frequently by PT students (range: 0.85–2.23). Programs displayed no favoritism for a particular resource [Interaction: Resource*Program, F(3;13,048)=0.148; p=0.931] although for Renal Acid‐Base [Interaction: Student*Resource, F(236; 4,266)=4.528; p<0.001] and Reproduction [Interaction: Student*Resource, F(236;1,422)=23.847; p<0.001], 60 and 143 students, respectively, demonstrated preference for videos (37/60) and PP pdfs (139/143). Unit exam percentages were correlated with PP pdf access for PT Endocrine only (r2=0.284, p=0.041) with trends for MBS Renal Acid‐Base (r2=0.354, p=0.055) and MBS Reproduction (r2=0.350, p=0.058). There was a trend for video access to correlate with unit exam percentages for only PT Endocrine (r2=0.262, p=0.060). Providing students with video recordings of the lectures did not significantly improve exam performance for any unit. Results from this study may help Physiology faculty counsel students in individual programs on appropriate resource utilization for efficient mastery of Physiology and best performance on unit exams.