Medical schools provide many educational resources in their basic science curriculum, including slide-based lectures, handouts, study guides, reviews, textbooks, primary literature, and web-based links. We recently instituted a web-based lecture recording system, which synchronizes lecture audio with visual components, as opposed to previous audio-only recordings. This study sought to determine how this recording system was being used by students, whether its availability impacted class attendance, and whether this resource had a positive effect on student performance. First-and second-year medical students were surveyed regarding class attendance and their use of lecture recordings. In addition, students indicated their impression of how lecture recordings influenced exam performance for several of their basic science courses. Student perception was compared with actual exam results. Of 206 students who completed the survey, 80.1% (N = 165) utilized the lecture recording system. Of 91 second-year students using the resource, only 14.4% (N = 13) mentioned a decline in lecture attendance. Despite how it was used, first-and second-year medical students overwhelmingly responded in favor of these audiovisual-synchronized recordings. 90.3% of responding medical students using recordings felt this resource improved exam performance. While student perception was positive, our multidisciplinary data suggest otherwise. With the exception of the second-year Pharmacology course, lecture recordings did not have an impact, either in a positive or negative direction on exam performance across seven first-and second-year basic science courses. Lecture recordings can be viewed as another useful tool, in addition to traditional lectures, that allows for flexibility in study habits and self-directed learning.
Medical schools should use a variety of measures to evaluate the effectiveness of their clinical curricula. Both outcome measures and process measures should be included, and these can be organized according to the four-level training evaluation model developed by Donald Kirkpatrick. Managing evaluation data requires the institution to employ deliberate strategies to monitor signals in real-time and aggregate data so that informed decisions can be made. Future steps in program evaluation includes increased emphasis on patient outcomes and multi-source feedback, as well as better integration of existing data sources.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.