Does testing enhance learning in continuing medical education?

作者：Meghan McConnell, Chenchen Hou, Mohamed Panju, Akbar Panju, Khalid Azzam · 发表于：Canadian Medical Education Journal · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.36834/cmej.42236 · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Innovations in Medical Education、Student Assessment and Feedback、Medical Education and Admissions

Background: There has been growing interest in using theory-driven research to develop and evaluate continuing medical education (CME) activities. Within health professions education, testing has been shown to promote learning in a variety of different contexts, an effect referred to as test-enhanced learning (TEL). However, the extent to which TEL generalizes to CME remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether physicians who received two intervening tests following a CME event would experience a TEL effect relative to physicians who received additional study material to review without testing. Methods: Forty-nine physicians were recruited during a local CME activity. Physicians were randomized to either a) the test group (n=26), where participants completed two 20 multiple-choice question (MCQ) quizzes related to the lecture content or b) the study group (n=23), where participants studied the same information without testing. Testing and studying occurred independently during the CME activity, and then four weeks later online. At eight weeks, participants completed a final 20-item MCQ online test. A between-subjects t-test was used to compare performance on the final test as a function of the initial educational activity (test group vs. study group).Results: Performance on the final MCQ test was equivalent for both test (Mean (SD): 75% (9.9)) and study-only (77% (7.3)) conditions (t(47) = 0.94, p=0.35). Conclusion: The null findings in the present st...