The Predictive Utility of Nontraditional Test Scores for First-Year Pharmacy Student Academic Performance

Lobb, William B.; Wilkin, Noel E.; McCaffrey, David J.; Wilson, Marvin C.; Bentley, John P.

doi:10.5688/aj7006128

Cited by 49 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…4,5 The LASSI has been used at more than 2274 academic institutions according to the LASSI publishers. 3 LASSI subtests have been demonstrated to be generalizable to different populations in higher education, including undergraduates, 4-6 pharmacy students, 7 and medical students. 8,9 Cano's recent indepth analysis 10 concludes that the LASSI remains an understudied instrument and more research is needed on its psychometric properties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2,[7][8][9] Sleight and Mavis 9 examined LASSI subtest scores on a sample of 96 2nd-year medical students divided into low, medium, and high cohorts based on MCAT scores. The bottom cohort had the lowest scores and the top cohort had the highest scores on the Motivation and Concentration subtests.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the subtests Motivation, Anxiety, Concentration, Selecting Main Ideas, and Test Strategies had significant positive correlations with 1st-year GPA. 7 In the only other study with chiropractic student subjects, Pringle and Lee 2 compared LASSI subtest scores for sixth-trimester chiropractic students to scores on the Part I National Board of Chiropractic Exam (NBCE) as well as entering and cumulative GPAs. Moderately high correlations were found between all of the LASSI subtest scores and NBCE scores and cumulative GPA.…”

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confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Differences in Learning and Study Strategies Inventory Scores Between Chiropractic Students With Lower and Higher Grade Point Averages*

Schutz

Gallagher

Tepe

2011

Journal of Chiropractic Education

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Purpose: This pilot study was designed to investigate the relationship between chiropractic students' learning and study strategies and academic performance. Differences in strategic learning between chiropractic students with higher grade points averages (GPAs) and those with lower GPAs have not been previously reported. Methods: Fifty-seven consenting first-trimester chiropractic students self-administered the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI). Differences between high and low GPA groups were evaluated for 10 subtests and three factors using independent samples t-tests. Results: The high GPA group scored significantly higher (p < .05) on LASSI subtests Anxiety, Attitude, Concentration, Motivation, Test Strategies, and Selecting Main Ideas, and on factors Effort-Related Activities and Goal Orientation. No differences between groups were found for subtests Information Processing, Self-Testing, Study Aids, and Time Management or for the Cognitive Activities factor. Conclusions: The results of this study show that differences in LASSI subtest and factor scores are associated with academic performance. For the participants studied, motivational and affective aspects of strategic learning contributed to higher academic performance, whereas cognitive strategies did not. Higher performing students utilized Effort-Related and Goal Orientation learning strategies at significantly higher levels than lower performing students. The LASSI may be useful in identifying students who could benefit from learning and study skills development. Longitudinal study is recommended to investigate the effects of students' learning and study strategies on different academic content domains as well as the effects of strategic study and learning skills training on academic performance. ( INTRODUCTIONAcademic success in higher education may be affected by many variables such as student ability, academic load, quality of instruction, prior education, and nonschool responsibilities.1 Learning and study strategies, which are students' characteristic ways of approaching a learning task, including "thoughts, behaviors, attitudes, motivation, and beliefs related to successful learning in higher education," may also affect academic success.1 Understanding the relationship between learning and study strategies and academic performance could help identify barriers to learning and create interventions to improve students' learning experiences.Examining the cognitive processes, behaviors, attitudes, and motivations that contribute to strategic learning is important for improving the student learning process, curricular planning, and designing effective, performance-enhancing educational interventions. To date, few studies have focused on strategic learning in graduate health care education, with only one study performed in chiropractic education. 2 The current study investigates this understudied area. The focus of this pilot study is the relationship between academic performance and study and learning strategies including ability to co...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Differences in Learning and Study Strategies Inventory Scores Between Chiropractic Students With Lower and Higher Grade Point Averages*

Schutz

Gallagher

Tepe

2011

Journal of Chiropractic Education

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“…30 The PCAT is a standardized test designed to measure the abilities, aptitudes, and skills that pharmacy schools identify as essential for successful completion of their programs. 31 The test was developed in 1973 after a study conducted across American pharmacy schools confirmed that 82% were interested in a standardized entrance examination specific to pharmacy education. Since that time, the PCAT has been revised several times to incorporate pharmacy practice changes.…”

Section: Admissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canadian Educational Approaches for the Advancement of Pharmacy Practice

Frankel

Louizos

Austin

2014

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education

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Canadian faculties (schools) of pharmacy are actively engaged in the advancement and restructuring of their programs in response to the shift in pharmacy to pharmacists having/assuming an advanced practitioner role. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of evidence outlining optimal strategies for accomplishing this task. This review explores several educational changes proposed in the literature to aid in the advancement of pharmacy education such as program admission requirements, critical-thinking assessment and teaching methods, improvement of course content delivery, value of interprofessional education, advancement of practical experiential education, and mentorship strategies. Collectively, implementation of these improvements to pharmacy education will be crucial in determining the direction the profession will take.

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“…For example, Lobb, Wilkin, McCaffrey, Wilson and Bentley (2006) found no predictive relation between university students' critical thinking skills and their first-year academic achievement.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

University Applicants’ Critical Thinking Skills: The Case of the Finnish Educational Sciences

Utriainen

Marttunen

Kallio

et al. 2016

Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research

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This study investigates the quality of the critical thinking skills of applicants (n=77) seeking entry to the faculty of educational sciences in a Finnish university and how these skills are associated with the applicant's age, previous higher education experience and matriculation and entrance examination scores. The data consist of the applicants' responses to problem-solving tasks and their matriculation and entrance examination scores. Critical thinking skills were measured with comparison and argumentation tasks. The results indicate that comparison of the texts and analysis of the arguments they contained were more difficult tasks than putting forward arguments both for and against of one's personal standpoint. In addition, previous experience of higher education predicted participants' comparison skills and their matriculation examination grades predicted their argumentation skills. The feasibility of using critical comparison tasks in the entrance examination tests is discussed.Keywords: critical thinking, argumentation, entrance examination, academic achievement, higher education 3Critical thinking and well-developed argumentation skills are commonly seen as important from the civic participation perspective (Arum & Roksa, 2011;Kuhn, 2005;Williams, Foster & Krohn, 2008), and are also regarded as key learning outcomes by higher education institutions (Halpern, 2001). Hence it is not surprising that university students' critical thinking skills have been widely studied (e.g., reviews by Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005;Niu, Behar-Horenstein & Garvan, 2013), and also that various definitions of critical thinking have been proposed. For example, Elder and Paul (2010) define critical thinking as a process of assessing and analyzing one's own thinking with the aim of improving it, whereas Ennis (1993) conceptualizes critical thinking as reasonable reflective thinking, aiming at deciding what to believe or not. These definitions highlight the importance of knowledge and its justification in conceptions of critical thinking. Ennis (2008) has labeled views of this kind as epistemic approaches to the conception of critical thinking, since they share the purpose of finding the truth or at least the closest approximation to it. In contrast to this common epistemic element is the claim that there is no unanimous definition of critical thinking (Flores, Matkin, Burbach, Quinn & Harding, 2012). Nevertheless, three common dimensions for critical thinking have been suggested, namely the ability to perform rational and reasonable thinking, the ability to see alternative viewpoints, and the ability to reflect on one's own thinking and its quality (Niu et al., 2013;Flores et al., 2012).Like the definitions of critical thinking, the research results on learning critical thinking skills as an outcome of university studies are also conflicting. In some studies, participation in higher education has been found to develop certain elements of students' critical thinking, that is, the ability to approach problems from various...

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The Predictive Utility of Nontraditional Test Scores for First-Year Pharmacy Student Academic Performance

Cited by 49 publications

References 21 publications

Differences in Learning and Study Strategies Inventory Scores Between Chiropractic Students With Lower and Higher Grade Point Averages*

Differences in Learning and Study Strategies Inventory Scores Between Chiropractic Students With Lower and Higher Grade Point Averages*

Canadian Educational Approaches for the Advancement of Pharmacy Practice

University Applicants’ Critical Thinking Skills: The Case of the Finnish Educational Sciences

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