How many of you are getting hit with this POGIL fad?

[tluedeke]

I'm an older non-trad, taking some classes in order to get ready for a medical career. In taking Biochemistry, I'm running into what seems like the latest in a never-ever-never-never-ever-NEVER-ending series of education fads. Apparently the educational reformers keep themselves employed by careening from fad to fad, leaving one when it inevitably fails, then inventing one worse.

POGIL (process oriented guided inquiry learning) basically amounts to a situation in which, rather than learning from a professional expert in the field, you gather into groups of similarly ignorant colleagues, put on pretend titles (manager, recorder, quality assurance) like you are a six-year old in a tree house, and flounder around for an hour not learning anything (reminds me of the quote that "No one is as dumb as all of us"). I also spend hours weekly doing homework assignments filling out "reading lists" for chapters in the book, and answering scintillating questions like "how many oxygen atoms are in a water molecule?". I despise it, and swear I will never take another class using that method.

Anyone else running into this, and if so, for what class(es)? Please tell me the medical schools have not fallen for this rubbish, and have implemented it in their MD or DO programs.

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[GomersGoToGround]

You're description is hysterical. Jesus, I can't even. Thumb up!

And look up PBL. Some sessions make your eyes roll so hard that your optic nerves detach.

Similar to pandas in captivity, you don't really do much besides just stare at one another, and feel either a) like an idiot, or b) like a genius, until it shortly fades, and you are back at option 'a'.

Questions are often brought up when you reach a topic in the case that is not yet understood, as well as learning objectives that students are responsible for looking up and presenting at the next meeting.

They may often take the form of, "If the patient is hypokalemic, how many hours does that leave today for you to study for your exam tomorrow?" Or, "If there is no staff anywhere in the hospital and you have a trauma on the way, where do you go?" The answer to which is, "The same place the entire hospital staff ran off to."

Ah, group work.

 

[intangible]

The last time I did that, I was in middle school. In college, I've gone through PLTL (peer-led team learning), a program designed as a recitation for general biology courses. They focus on classes 8-12 students big, and then they'll lead a discussion that is meant to help us solidify the information in our heads.

Good effort, too bad everyone is clueless and one person (me) ends up having to spit out answers for just about...everything, if I want to get out of there on time.

 

[Spirit of the Student Doc]

The last time I did that, I was in middle school. In college, I've gone through PLTL (peer-led team learning), a program designed as a recitation for general biology courses. They focus on classes 8-12 students big, and then they'll lead a discussion that is meant to help us solidify the information in our heads.

Good effort, too bad everyone is clueless and one person (me) ends up having to spit out answers for just about...everything, if I want to get out of there on time.

You've never just left? That's what I do and anything voluntary I don't go to. I usually say something just came up and then I leave.... It helps I wear business casual every day (well except when I wear Minnesota Wild gear)

 

[intangible]

You've never just left? That's what I do and anything voluntary I don't go to. I usually say something just came up and then I leave.... It helps I wear business casual every day (well except when I wear Minnesota Wild gear)

The recitation is generally time-limited, but you can't just get up and leave. You have to finish the "discussion," first.

 

[ridethecliche]

The recitation is generally time-limited, but you can't just get up and leave. You have to finish the "discussion," first.

"I'm finished"

/walk out

 

[Mad Jack]

I'm an older non-trad, taking some classes in order to get ready for a medical career. In taking Biochemistry, I'm running into what seems like the latest in a never-ever-never-never-ever-NEVER-ending series of education fads. Apparently the educational reformers keep themselves employed by careening from fad to fad, leaving one when it inevitably fails, then inventing one worse.

POGIL (process oriented guided inquiry learning) basically amounts to a situation in which, rather than learning from a professional expert in the field, you gather into groups of similarly ignorant colleagues, put on pretend titles (manager, recorder, quality assurance) like you are a six-year old in a tree house, and flounder around for an hour not learning anything (reminds me of the quote that "No one is as dumb as all of us"). I also spend hours weekly doing homework assignments filling out "reading lists" for chapters in the book, and answering scintillating questions like "how many oxygen atoms are in a water molecule?". I despise it, and swear I will never take another class using that method.

Anyone else running into this, and if so, for what class(es)? Please tell me the medical schools have not fallen for this rubbish, and have implemented it in their MD or DO programs.

PBL/CBL is kind of like that at med schools, except everyone is equal. Every week you read up on a case and work with your group to try and tie the concepts together. You have a facilitator for your group of 4-6 people to guide you when you get lost, usually a PhD. It's super helpful if everyone takes it seriously, which we do. By the end, you end up with a concept map that completely describes a patient, their pathology, their treatment, and how everything ties together.

 

[PreciousHamburgers]

"I'm finished"

/walk out

 

[PreciousHamburgers]

You've never just left? That's what I do and anything voluntary I don't go to. I usually say something just came up and then I leave.... It helps I wear business casual every day (well except when I wear Minnesota Wild gear)

 

[EParker37]

like you are a six-year old in a tree house,

Started losing it here.

and answering scintillating questions like "how many oxygen atoms are in a water molecule?".

I absolutely lost it right here.

In response to the question, when I did my UG, I never once had a normal class (outside of the required freshman orientation get to know everyone 1 credit hour thing) that was not a standard lecture style class. And putting a bunch of people who aren't experts together to try and teach each other does not sound conducive to, well, much of anything. However, we did do a lot of play pretend when we had to take incident commander training, and sometimes it felt like kindergarten (firefighters are immature at most times, well, and us paramagicians too) but at least it was fun.

 

[milski]

We had POGIL for some of the lectures for one of my intro bio classes, something like 5 lectures out of 30 or so. We did not have any pretend roles and that would have been hard to arrange for 200+ class. We only had group work of 3-4 people reading barely legible black-and-white copies of colored diagrams trying to figure out what is going on. It felt like a huge waste of time; the material covered ended up as the my weakest areas for the course.

 

[tarsus]

I've had tons of these types of classes. Probably half of my science classes have been POGIL-based. I absolutely hate it. I never feel prepared for exams, and I think it makes it too easy for students to do minimal or no preparation beforehand, which leads to frantic searching through the book and/or Google in attempt to get the worksheet of the day done in time. I think that for some learners it might work well, but I wholeheartedly prefer the traditional lecture setting. My physiology class was lecture twice a week and one POGIL exercise at the end of the week, and I enjoyed that set-up. I think the hybrid structure works well and kind of gives students the best of both worlds. My biochemistry class I'm taking now is solely POGIL, and my general biology, microbiology, genetics, cell biology, and other biology major core classes had a lot of these 'flipping the classroom' techniques as well.

 

[LizzyM]

I'm an older non-trad, taking some classes in order to get ready for a medical career. In taking Biochemistry, I'm running into what seems like the latest in a never-ever-never-never-ever-NEVER-ending series of education fads. Apparently the educational reformers keep themselves employed by careening from fad to fad, leaving one when it inevitably fails, then inventing one worse.

POGIL (process oriented guided inquiry learning) basically amounts to a situation in which, rather than learning from a professional expert in the field, you gather into groups of similarly ignorant colleagues, put on pretend titles (manager, recorder, quality assurance) like you are a six-year old in a tree house, and flounder around for an hour not learning anything (reminds me of the quote that "No one is as dumb as all of us"). I also spend hours weekly doing homework assignments filling out "reading lists" for chapters in the book, and answering scintillating questions like "how many oxygen atoms are in a water molecule?". I despise it, and swear I will never take another class using that method.

Anyone else running into this, and if so, for what class(es)? Please tell me the medical schools have not fallen for this rubbish, and have implemented it in their MD or DO programs.

Run for the hills! More and more schools are using team based learning techniques and while very good if done correctly, and meant to help you develop into a life long learner who will know how to find and synthesize new information throughout your career (because what we know in medicine is continually changing), if done poorly it can be a miserable experience.

If you just walk out of a mandatory group activity, you will be called on the carpet for being unprofessional and you can be expelled or denied a diploma on those grounds.

 

[Goro]

You might not like to hear this, but this is a much more effective learning method than the "sage on the stage".

The process can be made to prevent one person from slacking off by having the team grade each other's performance.

You had better do your homework on how many medical schools DON'T use this method, because it's effective and popular.

I'm an older non-trad, taking some classes in order to get ready for a medical career. In taking Biochemistry, I'm running into what seems like the latest in a never-ever-never-never-ever-NEVER-ending series of education fads. Apparently the educational reformers keep themselves employed by careening from fad to fad, leaving one when it inevitably fails, then inventing one worse.

POGIL (process oriented guided inquiry learning) basically amounts to a situation in which, rather than learning from a professional expert in the field, you gather into groups of similarly ignorant colleagues, put on pretend titles (manager, recorder, quality assurance) like you are a six-year old in a tree house, and flounder around for an hour not learning anything (reminds me of the quote that "No one is as dumb as all of us"). I also spend hours weekly doing homework assignments filling out "reading lists" for chapters in the book, and answering scintillating questions like "how many oxygen atoms are in a water molecule?". I despise it, and swear I will never take another class using that method.

Anyone else running into this, and if so, for what class(es)? Please tell me the medical schools have not fallen for this rubbish, and have implemented it in their MD or DO programs.

 

[EParker37]

You might not like to hear this, but this is a much more effective learning method than the "sage on the stage".

The process can be made to prevent one person from slacking off by having the team grade each other's performance.

You had better do your homework on how many medical schools DON'T use this method, because it's effective and popular.

What is the evidence that putting non-experts together makes for more effective learning? Or more effective than a class where students and professor interact regularly during the lecture?

 

[cidem2065]

Run for the hills! More and more schools are using team based learning techniques and while very good if done correctly, and meant to help you develop into a life long learner who will know how to find and synthesize new information throughout your career (because what we know in medicine is continually changing), if done poorly it can be a miserable experience.

If you just walk out of a mandatory group activity, you will be called on the carpet for being unprofessional and you can be expelled or denied a diploma on those grounds.

Unless you go out on a high note.

 

[the_fella]

I had a microbiology prof. in undergrad who did something similar. He made us get in groups and teach each other the material. We didn't really understand it, so how were we supposed to do that? I tore him a new one in his evaluation. Told him we're paying him for doing his job for him and that if he doesn't' want to teach, he should consider finding a new career. I know for a fact I'm not the only one who felt this way. I remember he once freaked out on this girl for having a cell phone out in class (this was a "lecture" with maybe 100+ people). He reacted as though she'd just shot Lincoln. He tried to claim she was disrupting others. I didn't even notice she had the thing out until he got his panties in a twist over it.

 

[Goro]

I don't have the citations, but you learn more effectively when you dig up something and read it, as opposed to being told it.

I agree that the system needs to be well set up, as LizzyM pointed out.

What is the evidence that putting non-experts together makes for more effective learning? Or more effective than a class where students and professor interact regularly during the lecture?

 

[Spirit of the Student Doc]

I had a microbiology prof. in undergrad who did something similar. He made us get in groups and teach each other the material. We didn't really understand it, so how were we supposed to do that? I tore him a new one in his evaluation. Told him we're paying him for doing his job for him and that if he doesn't' want to teach, he should consider finding a new career. I know for a fact I'm not the only one who felt this way. I remember he once freaked out on this girl for having a cell phone out in class (this was a "lecture" with maybe 100+ people). He reacted as though she'd just shot Lincoln. He tried to claim she was disrupting others. I didn't even notice she had the thing out until he got his panties in a twist over it.

Sounds like a nazi-teacher. Unfortunately super bad examples of the mentally sick can't be used to discredit a "teaching method."

Sorry you had to suffer through that though. My clinical micro (MLT) professor was awesome, I'd show up, do my thing in lab, go home, come to class, take test, go home.... I was dumb and got a 92-93ish (it was like a 92.something I don't recall anymore) B, but that was my fault. I also had a intro to gen chem proffesor who almost failed me because I was never on time to class, on account of my broken leg and being on the other side of campus (which resulted in an automatic F for the hw due and the points or assignments that day... in other words if you're late don't bother showing up. Late = the moment she rang the buzzer at 10:01).... yeah she was put on teacher probation eventually. I'm sure behind the doors your micro teacher was put in his place as well.

 

[Spirit of the Student Doc]

I don't have the citations, but you learn more effectively when you dig up something and read it, as opposed to being told it.

I agree that the system needs to be well set up, as LizzyM pointed out.

I'm just curious but do you teach, Goro? If so how do you (and colleagues) feel about Echo (or similar) programs that tapes the lecture? I do much better in these classes and see them as the modern day equivalent of the tape recorder my grandparents used.

 

[WingedOx]

I don't have the citations, but you learn more effectively when you dig up something and read it, as opposed to being told it.

I agree that the system needs to be well set up, as LizzyM pointed out.

the flaw in this argument is the assumption that successful students of higher education aren't already absorbing most of their information by reading, regardless of instruction method.

 

[Goro]

I indeed teach and love it.

I'm OK with video taping as long as I don't end up on YouTube. My students like our video system and if it helps them, then I'm all in favor of it. It has cut down on class attendance, and we're still trying to figure out what to do. I definitely don't want to lecture to a camera, but a flipped curriculum of some sort is coming because this generation of students is used to that style of technology, and learning.

I'm just curious but do you teach, Goro? If so how do you (and colleagues) feel about Echo (or similar) programs that tapes the lecture? I do much better in these classes and see them as the modern day equivalent of the tape recorder my grandparents used.

 

[Goro]

The trouble with medical education is that there's no time to read all of the required material, as it just keeps increasing every year.

One can't simply say "here, read everything in Harrisons, and Gilman"

the flaw in this argument is the assumption that successful students of higher education aren't already absorbing most of their information by reading, regardless of instruction method.

 

[Spirit of the Student Doc]

I indeed teach and love it.

I'm OK with video taping as long as I don't end up on YouTube. My students like our video system and if it helps them, then I'm all in favor of it. It has cut down on class attendance, and we're still trying to figure out what to do. I definitely don't want to lecture to a camera, but a flipped curriculum of some sort is coming because this generation of students is used to that style of technology, and learning.

Oh, you don't have to personally end up on camera. Most professors who use it (at my large undergrad probably account to a handful or two) just tape the powerpoint and their voice, along with whatever else is said in class. Sounds like your a great professor Goro.

 

[WingedOx]

The trouble with medical education is that there's no time to read all of the required material, as it just keeps increasing every year.

One can't simply say "here, read everything in Harrisons, and Gilman"

eh, as long as the schools are providing good materials to study from (read: the syllabus) that meets the expectations of what a M1/M2 should know for the boards, I have to STRONGLY disagree with this. Perhaps it's a credit to where I went to school that they did the effectively, but I just can't see having a mandatory time sink built into a schedule being any more helpful (I rarely went to lecture btw).

Same with the undergrad level. Perhaps it's because we did things the traditional way, but I just don't understand what I'd benefit from discussion about what a histone does from peers assuming I understand the material as presented by the prof.

 

[Holmwood]

Group-based learning can be quite good when everyone has an equal opportunity to contribute to the topic. I've had it in biochem and advanced evolution and it tended to work out well so long as people studied beforehand (assigned readings and summary papers), the class size was small, students were motivated (participation points help), and the professor was there to guide the discussion. It's similar to the journal clubs you do in research labs and fellowships except grades are involved.

POGIL is ineffective in that it doesn't enforce equal contributions ("managers" and "skeptics" tend to do nothing while the "researcher" does the grunt work), it doesn't cover enough topics/subject matter to warrant the lost lecture time, the professor loafs around (leaving everyone to flounder about), and students tend to have inadequate preparation for it anyway (cramming with work and all).

 

[Goro]

Again, the data shows that people learn and more importantly, retain info when they do the work themselves.

Same with the undergrad level. Perhaps it's because we did things the traditional way, but I just don't understand what I'd benefit from discussion about what a histone does from peers assuming I understand the material as presented by the prof.[/QUOTE]

Concur. That's why having the group grade themselves forces the slackers to actually do something. We see all the time in labs who are the doers and who are the lazy ones.

POGIL is ineffective in that it doesn't enforce equal contributions ("managers" and "skeptics" tend to do nothing while the "researcher" does the grunt work), it doesn't cover enough topics/subject matter to warrant the lost lecture time, the professor loafs around (leaving everyone to flounder about), and students tend to have inadequate preparation for it anyway (cramming with work and all).

 

[Lannister]

Actually my biology class (physiology and development, the third class in the intro sequence) is kind of like this, but I actually love it.

So basically the professor records her lectures and puts them online. Before we come to class, we're expected to watch the lecture, read the textbook if we want, and fill out some pre-class questions to make sure we understand the material. Then in class, which we only have once a week, we work in small groups to solve problems relating to the material we learned in the lecture. Then after class, we have to write a reflection, which asks about both how the group work went, and has a few review questions on the material itself.

I feel like I'm learning everything in so much more detail than I would in a regularly-formatted class. Maybe it just fits with my learning style, but I really like this class. And I do actually feel like I learn a lot from working in a group. Sometimes I don't understand something, or I think I understand something but really I don't, and the group is able to explain it to me. You just have make sure you keep up with the lectures, because each one contains an enormous amount of material, so if you don't watch one you're kind of screwed.

This is the first time the bio department at my school is teaching a class in this style. They're trying to model it after the way our university's med school is modeled, actually (they do a ton of group work, very few lectures, etc.).

 

[Psai]

You might not like to hear this, but this is a much more effective learning method than the "sage on the stage".

The process can be made to prevent one person from slacking off by having the team grade each other's performance.

You had better do your homework on how many medical schools DON'T use this method, because it's effective and popular.

Goro, have you actually been through it? It's not even close to good
anything with buzzwords is guaranteed to be useless
grading each other's performance doesn't work because you'll grade everyone else high due to the prisoner's dilemma. things work better when everyone works together to score highly than when they bring each other down

 

[Doudline]

Life itself is "the blind leading the blind", honey.
Get used to it tbh.

 

[Goro]

My colleagues have done it, and have gotten it to work. The communal grading isn't We grade our Lab Group, it's "I grade each member of the group". Therefore, the group isn't graded each person is (by others) and they are also graded for getting the material correct. We even have means of scoring a 1st and 2nd choice.

Keep in mind that these exercises are NOT the entire curriculum. We're still addicted to standardized tests.

Goro, have you actually been through it? It's not even close to good
anything with buzzwords is guaranteed to be useless
grading each other's performance doesn't work because you'll grade everyone else high due to the prisoner's dilemma. things work better when everyone works together to score highly than when they bring each other down

 

[tluedeke]

For those of you claiming variants "It Works!", I'd love to see the evidence. I searched quite a bit, and what data I could find on POGIL showed results that were extraordinarily dubious, to be perfectly charitable. If anyone has seen well conducted studies showing something different, I'd be interested. I'm old enough to have seen these fads come and go, and I cannot recall *ever* seeing sound statistical evidence before or after rollout. This is the Common Core Syndrome, as I call it. Roll out a program with excessive fanfare and no testing, throw money around to entice schools to force students to participate, then never evaluate it with honest assessments. Medicine is a evidence-based field. Education reform is a hot-air and bribery based field.

I can be flippant, but I do realize that group work can be very valuable. In medicine, which has a incredibly large baseline of knowledge, I'm guessing having feedback and/or brainstorming with teams of medical personnel with other backgrounds and other experience is enormously valuable (e.g. "You know, I ran into a patient with very similar problems a while back, and...."). I can see things like taking a team of medical students and challenging them with tackling diagnosis based upon non-specific symptoms ("team, patient A has fatigue and stomach aches, go off and deduce what possible underlying reasons there are, and propose further diagnostic testing"). However, my experience with POGIL is that it develops none of those skills (knowledge, assessment, or teamwork), wastes immense amount of class time that could be better spent elsewhere, and is extraordinarily irritating and insulting to boot.

Example: Today's biochem POGIL exercise required a team of five people to figure out deep mysteries of protein chemistry, such as what the X- and Y-axes are on a hemoglobin oxygen affinity curve, and (as always) putting together a reading list based upon the pertinent chapter in Lehninger. I wasted nearly four precious hours writing up pre- and post-POGIL answer sets and one hour in class. When I think of what I *could* have learned in those five hours by going to the library and really focusing, it really starts to piss me off.

 

[jqueb29]

PBL is ok when used properly and infrequently. If a school is highly PBL-oriented, take extreme caution.

 

[Psai]

My colleagues have done it, and have gotten it to work. The communal grading isn't We grade our Lab Group, it's "I grade each member of the group". Therefore, the group isn't graded each person is (by others) and they are also graded for getting the material correct. We even have means of scoring a 1st and 2nd choice.

Keep in mind that these exercises are NOT the entire curriculum. We're still addicted to standardized tests.

Yes I'm describing what happened in the we grade each member of the group. No one wants to screw anyone else over, not even the guy who showed up 30 mins late everytime and didn't do a thing
Team based learning is a waste of time, no matter what kind of frills you put on it

 

[EParker37]

I don't have the citations, but you learn more effectively when you dig up something and read it, as opposed to being told it.

I agree that the system needs to be well set up, as LizzyM pointed out.

I absolutely agree with self-teaching for those who can do it, I myself prefer to read and work things out myself as I retain it and can apply the concept to other things. But I do know some students do better with audio/visual learning styles, but I can see the benefit to what you're describing. In a perfect world, learning would be tailored to each student via some sort of computer interface or augmented reality system. How cool would it be to have actual live examples in 3D of physics and chemistry concepts. You could literally watch an SN2 reaction happen in real time floating in an overlay of the classroom. I think it would be immensely useful and something that may not be too far off with microsoft's new hololens stuff.

 

[Goro]

Your faculty need to know this. They, like anyone else, are subject to fads.

Yes I'm describing what happened in the we grade each member of the group. No one wants to screw anyone else over, not even the guy who showed up 30 mins late everytime and didn't do a thing
Team based learning is a waste of time, no matter what kind of frills you put on it

 

[Iamthep]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...y-techniques-that-work-and-surprisingly-dont/ summarizes my thoughts of studying fairly well.

Read the knowledge and then immediately test yourself on it.

There was another study showing what is most effective for studying for USMLE Step 1. https://members.aamc.org/eweb/upload/Are Questions the Answer PPT 11-6-12 10PM.pdf

Question banks were the most effective.

I think PBL gets to this in a round about way. It is simply too inefficient. There are faster ways to accomplish the same thing.

 

[tantacles]

I indeed teach and love it.

I'm OK with video taping as long as I don't end up on YouTube. My students like our video system and if it helps them, then I'm all in favor of it. It has cut down on class attendance, and we're still trying to figure out what to do. I definitely don't want to lecture to a camera, but a flipped curriculum of some sort is coming because this generation of students is used to that style of technology, and learning.

I'm all for video taping every single lecture regardless of class attendance. In reality, for many people, there is little reason to be in a classroom if there is no participation in the material, and that is how many, if not most, medical school lectures work. I'm a huge proponent of PBL when done right, but the instructor has a lot to do with it. A socratic session, if done well, can really hammer home difficult concepts that are difficult to grasp. Not everyone performs well under pressure, but frankly, medicine is a field in which most people, with a few exceptions (maybe radiology and pathology), are going to have to perform under that pressure once they're in the real world, so socratic endeavors like pimping and small groups actually make perfect sense to me.

 

[Mad Jack]

What is the evidence that putting non-experts together makes for more effective learning? Or more effective than a class where students and professor interact regularly during the lecture?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16799282
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19998696

 

[EParker37]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16799282
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19998696

Pretty interesting, but I would argue that a lot of medical students, and science minded students in general are better at self-teaching anyway. But this does certainly seem interesting, will have to read more about it.

 

[Psai]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16799282
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19998696

Second study looks like crap. First one is interesting, that jump in scores is surprising especially since you would expect to see a momentary drop in scores with a change in curriculum

 

[Apramana]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16799282
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19998696

Second study looks like crap. First one is interesting, that jump in scores is surprising especially since you would expect to see a momentary drop in scores with a change in curriculum

Research also indicates that up to 98% of peer-reviewed, published findings are not reproducible, even by the original investigators:

"John Ioannidis on Moving Toward Truth in Scientific Research


In this short video, PLOS author John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy, and of Statistics at Stanford University, considers how the scientific community can move toward greater truth in published research. Ioannidis is the author of two widely read articles published in PLOS Medicine:


Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

This influential article surpassed one million views in April 2014, the first PLOS article to achieve this milestone.


How to Make More Published Research True
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001747

Ioannidis’ most recent essay is number 50 in the Altmetric 2014 Top 100, a review of academic research articles receiving the most attention online this year." (https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=478927#p478927 ; "RE: The Importance of Evidence" - Jeff Novick, MS, RD)

Thus, it appears it might be prudent to wait for a clear, convincing body of evidence to become established over an extended period of time before we make significant changes to anything, especially our educational models.

Thanks for the excellent discussion, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic day.

 

[Mad Jack]

Research also indicates that up to 98% of peer-reviewed, published findings are not reproducible, even by the original investigators:

"John Ioannidis on Moving Toward Truth in Scientific Research


In this short video, PLOS author John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy, and of Statistics at Stanford University, considers how the scientific community can move toward greater truth in published research. Ioannidis is the author of two widely read articles published in PLOS Medicine:


Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

This influential article surpassed one million views in April 2014, the first PLOS article to achieve this milestone.


How to Make More Published Research True
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001747

Ioannidis’ most recent essay is number 50 in the Altmetric 2014 Top 100, a review of academic research articles receiving the most attention online this year." (https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=478927#p478927 ; "RE: The Importance of Evidence" - Jeff Novick, MS, RD)

Thus, it appears it might be prudent to wait for a clear, convincing body of evidence to become established over an extended period of time before we make significant changes to anything, especially our educational models.

Thanks for the excellent discussion, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic day.

The vast majority of medical schools are already using this sort of system, largely because it has been shown to increase Step scores. There's more than enough evidence, it's just that no one has yet done a comprehensive study. I haven't heard of a single instance of a school's Step scores dropping post-PBL, because it just doesn't happen.

Just figured I'd give you guys the heads up, because if you don't like small-group learning, you're going to hate med school.

 

[Apramana]

Thanks for the insight, Mad Jack.

I truly appreciate the opportunity be better informed of the reality of the situation, and I did not mean to detract from, or discourage, your efforts to help us understand it.

Thanks for your support I have learned a great deal from your efforts on SDN, and I look forward to continuing to do so. Please have a great day.

 

[Doudline]

Research also indicates that up to 98% of peer-reviewed, published findings are not reproducible, even by the original investigators:

"John Ioannidis on Moving Toward Truth in Scientific Research


In this short video, PLOS author John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy, and of Statistics at Stanford University, considers how the scientific community can move toward greater truth in published research. Ioannidis is the author of two widely read articles published in PLOS Medicine:


Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

This influential article surpassed one million views in April 2014, the first PLOS article to achieve this milestone.


How to Make More Published Research True
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001747

Ioannidis’ most recent essay is number 50 in the Altmetric 2014 Top 100, a review of academic research articles receiving the most attention online this year." (https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=478927#p478927 ; "RE: The Importance of Evidence" - Jeff Novick, MS, RD)

Thus, it appears it might be prudent to wait for a clear, convincing body of evidence to become established over an extended period of time before we make significant changes to anything, especially our educational models.

Thanks for the excellent discussion, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic day.

It's interesting on at first you're warning us against the validity of peer-reviewed research, then you're saying we should consider highly a piece of "research" because... it's got a lot of views.

Fascinating criteria.

 

[ridethecliche]

Sounds like a nazi-teacher. Unfortunately super bad examples of the mentally sick can't be used to discredit a "teaching method."

Sorry you had to suffer through that though. My clinical micro (MLT) professor was awesome, I'd show up, do my thing in lab, go home, come to class, take test, go home.... I was dumb and got a 92-93ish (it was like a 92.something I don't recall anymore) B, but that was my fault. I also had a intro to gen chem proffesor who almost failed me because I was never on time to class, on account of my broken leg and being on the other side of campus (which resulted in an automatic F for the hw due and the points or assignments that day... in other words if you're late don't bother showing up. Late = the moment she rang the buzzer at 10:01).... yeah she was put on teacher probation eventually. I'm sure behind the doors your micro teacher was put in his place as well.

Godwin's law invoked 20 posts in? Not bad.

 

[tluedeke]

For those of you claiming variants "It Works!", I'd love to see the evidence. I searched quite a bit, and what data I could find on POGIL showed results that were extraordinarily dubious, to be perfectly charitable. If anyone has seen well conducted studies showing something different, I'd be interested. I'm old enough to have seen these fads come and go, and I cannot recall *ever* seeing sound statistical evidence before or after rollout. This is the Common Core Syndrome, as I call it. Roll out a program with excessive fanfare and no testing, throw money around to entice schools to force students to participate, then never evaluate it with honest assessments. Medicine is a evidence-based field. Education reform is a hot-air and bribery based field.

I can be flippant, but I do realize that group work can be very valuable. In medicine, which has a incredibly large baseline of knowledge, I'm guessing having feedback and/or brainstorming with teams of medical personnel with other backgrounds and other experience is enormously valuable (e.g. "You know, I ran into a patient with very similar problems a while back, and...."). I can see things like taking a team of medical students and challenging them with tackling diagnosis based upon non-specific symptoms ("team, patient A has fatigue and stomach aches, go off and deduce what possible underlying reasons there are, and propose further diagnostic testing"). However, my experience with POGIL is that it develops none of those skills (knowledge, assessment, or teamwork), wastes immense amount of class time that could be better spent elsewhere, and is extraordinarily irritating and insulting to boot.

Example: Today's biochem POGIL exercise required a team of five people to figure out deep mysteries of protein chemistry, such as what the X- and Y-axes are on a hemoglobin oxygen affinity curve, and (as always) putting together a reading list based upon the pertinent chapter in Lehninger. I wasted nearly four precious hours writing up pre- and post-POGIL answer sets and one hour in class. When I think of what I *could* have learned in those five hours by going to the library and really focusing, it really starts to piss me off.

 

[tluedeke]

The vast majority of medical schools are already using this sort of system, largely because it has been shown to increase Step scores. There's more than enough evidence, it's just that no one has yet done a comprehensive study. I haven't heard of a single instance of a school's Step scores dropping post-PBL, because it just doesn't happen.

Just figured I'd give you guys the heads up, because if you don't like small-group learning, you're going to hate med school.

I love learning - small-group or otherwise. My point is that we aren't learning anything - it is more of an exercise in fad-laden slang and role-playing. It is small-group annoyance/small-group waste-of-time.

 

[tluedeke]

I would offer that a superior approach to turning every single class into a POGIL experiment would be to have a dedicated class (perhaps 1-2 credits per semester, repeating each year), where group-based learning is used solely. Present real problems (not mindless busywork) requiring multidisciplinary attacks, with a scope large and challenging enough that the teams really do have to act like teams to distribute effort and organize themselves in order to solve the problem. As an engineer, this is what we had to do for design classes at the senior undergraduate and graduate level (I'm a nuke engineer, so we were doing reactor designs - somebody would tackle the thermal hydraulics, another would tackle the core design, another the balance of plant, etc, and everyone would have to work together and integrate to produce a feasible and substantiable design).

From the way my practicing physician friends have recalled their training in school, this would seemingly be a much better approximation to what is done in medical school.

But this is NOT what is occurring in my biochemistry class. Not by a long shot.

 

[tluedeke]

Research also indicates that up to 98% of peer-reviewed, published findings are not reproducible, even by the original investigators:

"John Ioannidis on Moving Toward Truth in Scientific Research


In this short video, PLOS author John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine, of Health Research and Policy, and of Statistics at Stanford University, considers how the scientific community can move toward greater truth in published research. Ioannidis is the author of two widely read articles published in PLOS Medicine:


Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

This influential article surpassed one million views in April 2014, the first PLOS article to achieve this milestone.


How to Make More Published Research True
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001747

Ioannidis’ most recent essay is number 50 in the Altmetric 2014 Top 100, a review of academic research articles receiving the most attention online this year." (https://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=478927#p478927 ; "RE: The Importance of Evidence" - Jeff Novick, MS, RD)

Thus, it appears it might be prudent to wait for a clear, convincing body of evidence to become established over an extended period of time before we make significant changes to anything, especially our educational models.

Thanks for the excellent discussion, and I hope everyone is having a fantastic day.

Great links, thanks! As an engineer, I have to agree with the sentiments expressed in these. I can't speak for medicine, but I can certainly state that as an engineer who keeps up on journal articles, that a significant fraction have serious issues with them, and probably 90% could be jettisoned altogether and have little impact on anything. The POGIL articles I perused read like propaganda articles, rather than a stolid empirical assessment. Particularly mind-boggling were the ones showing awful results, but concluding that they were going forward full-bore (redoubling their efforts once all hope is lost...)

Good companies do not roll out large scale product changes or designs without doing extensive testing and introducing them to test markets. Educational reform seems to take the *exact* opposite approach. If it sounds lovely and has good intentions, SHIP IT!!