Can Blended Classroom and Distributed Learning Approaches be Used to Teach Medical Students How to Initiate Behavior Change Counseling During a Clinical Clerkship?

Abstract

Medical school curricula often provide insufficient time and instruction for health behavior change counseling. We examined the feasibility of blending classroom and distributed learning experiences to teach medical students how to initiate health behavior change counseling and analyzed the impact of this approach on their attitudes, knowledge, and skills. Usage patterns and pre- to post-class attitude and knowledge changes were assessed with self-report questions among 153 third year family medicine clerkship students. Most students viewed at least 90% of the online written content and took an average of 41 min (SD = 24 min 35 s) to view all of the content. Students' confidence in their ability to help patients change unhealthy behaviors significantly improved (p < .01). The blended learning curriculum facilitated learning of behavior change skills, encouraged interaction with course materials, and improved medical students' self confidence for using health behavior change skills.

Enhancing Students’ Learning about Healthy Living through Community Participation

“…2) Understanding learning experiences: To understand the learning experiences of the students during the HEC, we asked the students to fill 5-point Likert scale proforma. The questions covered the following twelve areas: collegiality [2] [3], safe and non-judgmental environment [4], participation in community education [5], assumption of leadership responsibilities [6], interaction with the community [7]- [9], participation in the sessions [10], focusing without imposing or being directive [11], responsibility for identifying learning objectives [12], post-session self-directed learning [3], prompt feedback regarding student performance [6], learning in the community [2] [13] [14], and whether the HEP was a success [15].…”

Curriculum Development with the Implementation of an Open-Source Learning Management System for Training Early Clinical Students: An Educational Design Research Study

“…In addition, we were able to identify several studies on blended learning possibilities in clerkships to inform the design of our LMS prototype. 6,13,16,17,20,21,23,25,34 We found no LMS implementation studies in the context of clerkships. To implement the LMS and create clerkship-specific content, we assembled a team consisting of clinical experts, medical education specialists, researchers, and e-learning specialists.…”

“…14 In the context of clinical rotations, medical educators have begun to research the integration of different virtual tools into their clinical curricula. These methods range from personal digital assistants for clerkship students 15 to web-based learning modules and virtual patients in clerkships across disciplines, including emergency medicine, 16 family medicine, 17 pediatrics, 18,19 radiology, 20 surgery, 21,22 geriatrics, 23 ophthalmology, 24 and psychiatry. 25 Learning outcomes up to the level of clinical competence have tended to be slightly better for curricula that include e-learning elements.…”

Evaluating Usability in Blended Learning Programs Within Health Professions Education: a Scoping Review

“…For example, scholars would often list the purpose of their study to evaluate the effectiveness of a blended learning program; however, when assessing their methods, questionnaires with items focused on learner satisfaction were often identified. Although only one study employed the term "usability" when reporting their BLP evaluation, scholars across the data set adopted several terms and concepts which were identified as related to usability and its major components, for instance, "appropriate" [51][52][53][54],"beneficial" [55],"clear" or "clarity" [52,[56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66],"easy" or "ease-of-use" [57,62,[65][66][67][68],"efficacy" [59,60,69,70],"favourable" [67],"flexibility" [51,54,56,57,62,64,[67][68][69][71][72][73][74][75][76][77]…”