How do I learn?
I use a variety of resources to support my learning from lecture notes to textbooks and flashcards. I tend to make me own notes based around the lectures we are given and add in more detail when I think something is more important than the other stuff. In medicine there is no way you can learn everything so I find it a fine but hard balance between knowing the breadth of subjects and trying to work out what they want us to know in more detail. Some of our lectures include “Learning Objectives” in their lectures and I personally find these very useful. For creating my notes, I make sure I can answer all the learning objectives and can use them to test myself at the end of the block.
Most of my learning comes from creating notes but sometimes, depending on the topic, I make flow charts or spider diagrams to show how things are connected together. Furthermore, in keeping with my visual learning, for Dermatology, I found myself creating a huge PowerPoint presentation with all the skin rashes and lesions. Adding some animation in PowerPoint means that when I view the slideshow, the image will appear first and then I have to suggest what the condition is before I get the answer.
For clinical learning, I find I most enjoy and benefit from ward based teaching. Since first year I have had so many enthusiastic doctors of all levels teaching me and it has definitely enhanced my clinical practice. I will always remember early in second year I had a ward based teaching session and the Consultant handed me and told me to interpret an ECG. I felt so pressured to answer and intimidated by my peers and the Consultant waiting for me to answer. I thought back to how we were taught to interpret ECGs and started at the beginning with the details of the ECG. I managed to talk through the ECG and got the diagnosis eventually. I won’t forget this event because it tested me in so many ways and my peers congratulated me at the end. Afterwards I felt much more confident about my ability to interpret ECGs and how to handle myself when faced with something I wasn’t too sure about.
How does my own learning relate to learning theories?
I totally agree with Socrates philosophy of education which includes the following 5 principles:
- Knowledge and learning as a worthwhile pursuit
- Learning as a social activity pursued through dialogue
- Questions lie at the heart of learning to draw out what they already know, rather than imposing pre-determined views
- We must realise the extent of our ignorance.
- Learning must be pursued with a ruthless intellectual honesty
Source: Donald Clark, http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Socrates
I think number 4 particularly relates to medicine and being a doctor. I feel it is imperative that we are able to recognise when we don’t know enough about something to discuss it with a patient or we haven’t practiced a clinical task enough to do it unsupervised. In terms of Socrates questioning approach, I definitely use this! Google is almost too available to us to help with our learning and I personally find it relatively easy to ask a tutor to explain themselves again.
I think Bandura’s “Learning by Observation” is highly integrated into our medical school and how we are taught clinical skills. We have group sessions where a tutor shows us how to do something and then critiques us when we attempt it. This is backed up by our schools YouTube page (Dundee University Clinical Skills) where we can revise the techniques in our own time. I find this page very useful for studying for OSCEs, we can watch the video then practice on our friends and receive feedback from them. I find this is the best way to study for OSCEs – practice, practice, practice!
Reading about Mayer & Clark’s 10 Rules for e-learning has most definitely given me food for thought in relation to my final project! I love their mantra of “less is more”. Quite often I find myself having to change backgrounds, text size and remove awful graphics from our lecture slides. I think some lectures just try to show that they understand how to work PowerPoint and so do everything that is possible on every single page. I find this very off-putting and my absolute pet hate is a blue background with yellow writing! I don’t have any problems with my vision but I find it very hard to focus and I wonder how people with vision difficulties get on! We have one lecturer who is a great lecturer but constantly uses this combination of colours. After 3 years I probably should have asked him to change it because it is such a waste of time! Sorry about the rant…
If you want to read about Mayer & Clark’s rules for e-learning you can find them here
Community of Practice
Within the medical school I think there is a vast number of the “communities of practice” as described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. I think the school as a whole is one community of practice with each year group creating another and within each year having several (we are split into groups for years 1-3). I would say the community of practice I am most involved in is that of my group B2. We work together a lot in class and meet together often to practice clinical skills techniques together. Moreover we have a Google Drive set up where we can all share our notes and learning materials and this year I’ve found this most useful.
This is the link I used to learn about communities of practice
I’ve found this tutorial interesting especially the work by Mayer & Clark which I will be re-reading and considering when creating my online revision aide!
Have a great day!
Laura
digitalmeded 