Analysis of Student Growth in Both Spatial Ability and Study Skills in Gross Anatomy.

Higher spatial ability has been previously shown to positively correlate with anatomy knowledge assessment scores. It has been hypothesized that students utilizing study materials that necessitate spatial aptitude will strengthen both spatial capabilities as well as student performance on curriculums that necessitate spatial awareness. We hypothesized that students would perform better on spatial ability tests at the end of a gross anatomy course than at the beginning. To test this hypothesis, all students took a spatial ability quiz at the beginning and end of the semester. Results indicate that students performed significantly better on the spatial tests after a semester of gross anatomy (p<0.01). This increased performance was much more evident with students who originally performed low on the test (p=3.37e‐6). Performance for both beginning and end spatial tests also correlated strongly with the overall score that each student received for the course (P>0.01). We conclude that gross anatomy curriculum helps to develop spatial aptitude in first year clinical students. We also hypothesized that students would improve their study skills utilizing a variety of pedagogies and thus perform better on quizzes after short durations of study time. To test this hypothesis, students were divided into three groups. Each group was assigned to study deep cervical anatomy utilizing either notes, a prosected cadaver, or a virtual dissector program (VH Dissector). Students were directed to study for 10 minutes and then take a quiz over the materials. This procedure was performed on both the first and last days of the semester. Examination scores at the beginning of the semester showed that the group studying with notes performed significantly better than those that used either cadaveric or virtual dissector computerized study methods (p<0.01). No distinction was observed between examination performance for groups who utilized either the virtual anatomy or cadaveric study materials. At the end of the semester, groups that used computer dissector program or the cadaveric study methods performed at equal proficiency as those that studied with notes. The end of the semester examination performance correlated strongly with improvements in spatial ability for the students utilizing virtual anatomy software as a study method. However, no correlation was observed with spatial ability changes for the groups using either notes or cadaveric study materials. Because the overall correlations between spatial ability and student performance were low, we conclude that student practice and familiarity with various pedagogies are likely to be the primary factor for the observed improvement in performance. Therefore, all forms of pedagogy may be beneficial if students are given appropriate training with the learning techniques. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .