No easy answers

I've been mulling over a wicked problem for weeks. If you haven't been around (check out previous entries in my blog, starting with April 3 and later), this all started as a question-asking exercise, exploring problems related to my practice. But now I've honed in on one question in particular: how best to improve student understanding and application in medical education, especially when they are primarily focused on memorization?

After identifying a problem to focus on, I looked up research completed by medical schools related to the problem, and found suggestions for learning activities to promote understanding and application, as well as affordances and constraints related to these activities. Additionally, I created a survey to better understand how the medical education community feels about the problem: is it actually a problem? What areas of the medical education experience foster memorization over understanding? And where are there opportunities in current curricula to incorporate activities for application?

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My investigation has now reached a logical point to share some of my findings. I created a website to showcase the problem, the results of my survey and key takeaways, highlights of some of the research that informs the problem and some possible approaches to the problem. Additionally, I have put together a personalized creation as a potential solution to the problem.

My creation is two-fold. First, I have written a general structure and deployment strategy of a learning unit (note that this draft unit is written within the context of large student cohorts, similar to the school of medical education where I practice). Second, I have created a draft survey/quiz which can be copied and reused by medical educators in their own context.

As a side note, I have spent some time reflecting on my experience with this project. I have been especially cognizant of own lack of knowledge related to this subject - I have only been a curriculum developer for six months, and though I have worked in the context of medical education for nearly nine years as an IT professional, I am aware of my general ignorance, both related to the breadth of the problem and plausible solutions to it.

However, as suggested by Warren Berger in A More Beautiful Question, "One of the primary drivers of questioning is an awareness of what we don’t know." He also highlights the value of neoteny, or "beginner's mind," when considering a wicked problem, as it can allow for new perspectives and approaches (Berger, 2014). I hope, if nothing else, that my website and personalized creation allow for renewed discussion on this topic, both in my context and those of medical education colleagues in my professional learning network. Perhaps, by asking this question, a more beautiful question may result.

References

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. Bloomsbury USA.