115 - Collaborative Assessments in a Time-restricted Gross Human Anatomy Course

Poster Board Number: 115
There are separate poster presentation times for odd and even posters.
Odd poster #s – first hour
Even poster #s – second hour

Co-authors:

Jessica Bergden - UT Health San Antonio; Jameel Young - Eastern Virginia Medical School; Lane Fickert - Eastern Virginia Medical School; Lauren Roten - Eastern Virginia Medical School; Madison Barber - Eastern Virginia Medical School; Alberto Musto - Eastern Virginia Medical School; Natascha Heise - Eastern Virginia Medical School

Abstract Body : Introduction

Medical education is continuing to face curricular changes due to the exponential growth of medical knowledge, accompanied by societal demands and expectations for the upcoming generation of physicians. Foundational courses such as human anatomy have been tasked to accommodate curricular shortening demands placing an increased pressure on teaching faculty. An opportunity arose to implement collaborative quizzes into an 8-week medical gross anatomy course to improve the assessment efficacy in a condensed curriculum. It was hypothesized that the implementation of collaborative quizzes facilitates group learning and discussion, assists students with their National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) summative examinations of the course, and provides insights into the types of content materials students are struggling with.

Methods

At Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, VA, medical and masters students were enrolled in an 8-week gross anatomy course composed of recorded lectures, hands-on laboratory sessions, and four weekly collaborative quizzes. The course was divided into two blocks followed by two summative NBME examinations. During each of the weekly quizzes, student groups of six rotated through twenty dissected donor stations, each containing a short clinical or anatomy-related multiple-choice question formatted in NBME style. At each station, students submitted one individual answer response and another after group discussion of the question. Data analysis was composed of individual and group student outcomes and changed answer responses of the four collaborative quizzes, two NBME anatomy-focused examinations, and overall course evaluations.

Results and Conclusion

Overall, all students (n = 203) passed the course and performed well on the four collaborative quizzes (mean = 88.7%, SD = 5.9) and NBME anatomy-focused summative examinations (mean = 85.1%, SD = 7.7). Analysis of the quiz questions revealed that topics involving multiple tagged structures, blood supply, and nerves resulted in the most answer changes after group discussion (25.2%, 27.9%, and 25% respectively). Most quiz answer changes occurred in the first collaborative quiz of the course. Course evaluations proved the quizzes to be enjoyable and beneficial in identifying areas of weakness. Area of improvement was adjusting logistics aspects. In this study, the collection and analysis of individual and group quiz scores revealed a novel indicator of at-risk students, providing educators with an additional tool to support students while also increasing teaching efficiency through peer learning. In the future, we hope to continue using this assessment and integrate content from various other pre-clerkship courses.