Description:
<jats:p>The goal of this study was to determine how first year medical (M1) students perform on different question types, first and second order, during gross anatomy practical examinations. In this study first order are simple “identify the tagged structure” questions. Second order questions require students to identify a structure, and apply their knowledge of it to answer correctly. An example of a second order question is “What spinal nerve levels does the tagged nerve originate from?” To conduct this investigation, laboratory practical examination questions (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic>=114) were coded as either first order (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic>=96) or second order (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic>= 18). Responses from the 2018 M1 class (<jats:italic>N</jats:italic>=167) were entered (1= correct, 0= incorrect) for analysis. The responses were added up and averaged for a first order, second order and overall examination grade. The overall average for the first half of the course was 80.66%. Averages for first and second order questions were 81.95% and 73.75% respectively. This resulted in an overall difference of 8.2% between the two different question types. A further break down shows a difference of 8.42% on block 1 and 6.45% on block 2. Data collection for the second half of the course is ongoing and will be added as it is obtained. These preliminary findings suggest that M1 students have a lower performance rate on second order questions. This may be an indicator that M1 students are not learning the material in a way that allows them to apply content effectively to answer second order questions. This apparent difficulty in students' ability to answer these questions is important for faculty to consider both in assessing instructional design and students' knowledge. Further investigation may yield more conclusive answers as to what may cause this disparity and how to address it.</jats:p><jats:p>This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in <jats:italic>The FASEB Journal</jats:italic>.</jats:p>