Although educational experts recommend the use of formative assessment, there is a dearth of empirical studies on its impact on academic achievement. In this research the authors analyse to what extent participation and performance in formative assessment are associated with positive academic outcomes of pre-graduate students of health sciences. A…

Gender is an essential determinant of health and illness. Gender awareness in doctors contributes to equity and equality in health and aims towards better health for men and women. Nevertheless, gender has largely been ignored in medicine. First, it is stated that medicine was "gender blind" by not considering gender whenever relevant. Secondly,…

Consumers' autonomy regarding health increasingly requires competences to critically appraise health information. Critical health literacy refers to the concept of evidence-based medicine. Instruments to measure these competences in curriculum evaluation and surveys are lacking. We aimed to develop and validate an instrument to measure critical…

Purpose: To examine the predictive ability of preadmission variables on United States Medical Licensing Examinations (USMLE) step 1 and step 2 performance, incorporating the use of a neural network model. Method: Preadmission data were collected on matriculants from 1998 to 2004. Linear regression analysis was first used to identify predictors of…

To explore the need for faculty development among Chinese medical educators. Leaders at each medical school in China were asked to complete a 123-item survey to identify interest in various topics and barriers and perceived benefits of participating in faculty development programs. Interest levels were high for all topics. Experience with Hospital…

Background: Adaptation to learning styles has been proposed to enhance learning. Objective: We hypothesized that learners with sensing learning style would perform better using a problem-first instructional method while intuitive learners would do better using an information-first method. Design: Randomized, controlled, crossover trial. Setting:…

Despite public health initiatives targeting rapid action in response to symptoms of myocardial infarction (MI), people continue to delay in going to a hospital when experiencing these symptoms due to lack of recognition as cardiac-related. The objective of this research was to characterize lay individuals' knowledge of symptoms of acute myocardial…

Although studies have begun to shed light on medical students' attitudes towards peer physical examination (PPE), they have been conducted at single sites, and have generally not examined changes in medical students' attitudes over time. Employing both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, the current study examines medical students' attitudes…

Proper interpretation of the results of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) is important for program directors, residents, and faculty who advise applicants about applying for residency positions. We suspected that applicants often misinterpreted their performance in relationship to others who took the same examination. In 2005, 54…

Different lines of research have suggested that context is important in acting and learning in the clinical workplace. It is not clear how contextual information influences residents' constructions of the situations in which they participate. The category accessibility paradigm from social psychology appears to offer an interesting perspective for…

Meiosis is a biological concept that is both complex and important for students to learn. This study aims to explore first-year biology students' explanations of the process of meiosis, using an explicit theoretical framework provided by the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO) model. The research was based on responses of 334…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how concept cartoons, together with other diagnostic and scaffolding tools, could be used in formative assessment, to stimulate talk and argumentation among students in small groups, as part of peer-assessment and self-assessment; and to provide diagnostic feedback about students' misconceptions to the…

This paper reports evidence that learners commonly develop a notion of chemical stability that, whilst drawing upon ideas taught in the curriculum, is nevertheless inconsistent with basic scientific principles. A series of related small-scale studies show that many college-level students consider a chemical species with an octet structure, or a…

The application of Biggs' and Collis' Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes taxonomy in the evaluation of student learning about cell membrane transport via a computer-based learning environment is described in this study. Pre-test-post-test comparisons of student outcome data (n = 80) were made across two groups of randomly assigned students:…

In this study, a hypothesised model with latent variables such as socio-economic status, students' perception of success and interest in different subject matter areas, out-of-school activities, and classroom teaching learning activities in relation to science achievement of the students was tested via linear structural modelling. The data come…