Premium
Student perspectives on the utility of student‐generated question writing in a physician assistant pharmacology course
Author(s) -
Guillory Ashley
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2021.35.s1.02804
Subject(s) - course (navigation) , medical education , medicine , mathematics education , psychology , pharmacology , engineering , aerospace engineering
Background While pharmacology does largely lend itself to merely memorizing facts for exams, understanding and retention of building block topics are critical to perform well on higher level exam questions. There is a significant body of work that indicates that generating and answering questions is beneficial to students in developing analytical skills as well as providing study resources. Students enrolled in a first‐year Clinical Pharmacology course in a graduate‐level Physician Assistant program were required to write forty multiple choice questions in the PeerWise platform over the course of the semester. Additionally, they were required to answer a minimum of eighty questions submitted by their peers. The purpose of this study is to get the student's perspectives on this learning activity. Methods Following the completion of the course and after grades had been turned in, students were sent a survey requesting feedback on the question‐writing activity. The survey consisted of eight Likert‐scaled questions about the activity as well as open response questions regarding the sources used, what they would change about the activity, and whether their skills in question‐writing improved over the semester. Results All survey respondents rated the utility of question‐writing in improving their depth of understanding as being useful with 90% of them rating it as being moderately to extremely useful. Eight‐five percent of respondents rated studying through PeerWise (writing and answering questions) as a good idea. Most respondents indicated that they did not enjoy the process of writing questions but did enjoy the process of answering other students’ questions. Students primarily used their lecture slides and textbook to develop their questions, but some also utilized Up‐to‐Date and SketchyPharm. Improvements to the design of the activity included: having a certain number of questions due before each exam, more oversight of the questions by the instructors to remove incorrect questions and/or questions that violated the guidelines, and limiting the topic categories so that questions on a specific topic were easier to find. Conclusions Overall, the response to the question writing activity has been positive from the students. Students found the activity to be challenging but useful. Students’ suggestions for improvement will be incorporated into this activity for future courses.