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Abstract
Background: Microanalytic techniques have shown considerable potential as avenues for understanding learning in a range of learning contexts. If a microanalytic approach is to be tested for utility, a suitable learning context is required. We chose problem-based learning (PBL) tutorials as our context.
Aims: We sought to determine if a new microanalytic approach is suitable for investigating the learning decisions made by students during PBL and what this form of microanalysis reveals.
Methods: Stimulated recall interviews were used to question 17 first year graduate-entry medical students regarding the conscious decisions behind their actions during one PBL case. Responses were categorized and used to construct process maps to illustrate the students’ decision-making. These maps and the decisions within them were analyzed focusing on how learners learn.
Results: Stimulated recall interviewing (SRI) was conducted, during which students could articulate the conscious decisions they made during PBL. The data collected were used to construct 191 process maps and 802 categorized decisions for analysis. Students’ decisions became increasingly self-centered as the case progressed while maintaining an awareness of group dynamics.
Conclusions: The microanalytic approach employed in this study is a suitable tool for understanding the nature of learning in this, and other environments.
Disclosure statement
The first author reports no conflicts of interest. The second author notes that the process used in this research is patented within Australia (Australian patent no 2002313850).
Glossary
Process maps: The initial function of a process map was that they visibly represent learners’ decisions sequentially. Each process map represented a learner’s decisions about processes for a single interview prompt. Process maps provide a means of illustrating how learners’ decisions relate to each other. They were also designed to compare the decisions learners made about processes, from one learning event to the next.
Corrigan G. 2001. Conceptual development, investigative skills and decisions about processes. [PhD dissertation]. Sydney: The University of Sydney.
SRL microanalysis: Has been defined as a “structured interview approach that involves administering context-specific questions targeting multiple cyclical phase processes as trainees engage in authentic activities.”
Cleary, TJ, Durning SJ and Artino ARJ (2016). Microanalytic Assessment of Self-Regulated Learning During Clinical Reasoning Tasks: Recent Developments and Next Steps. Academic Medicine 91:11: 1516-1521.
Microanalysis: Provides a sound and workable description of microanalysis as “a highly specific or fine-grained form of measurement that targets behaviors or processes as they occur in real time across authentic contexts”
Cleary TJ (2011). Emergence of Self-Regulated Learning Microanalysis Historical Overview, Essential Features, and Implications for Research and Practice. In Zimmerman BJ and Schunk DH. (Editors) Handbook of Self-Regulation of Learning and Performance (Educational Psychology Handbook) (Kindle Locations 9434–9436). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
Notes on contributors
Phillippa Smith, is a graduate medical student at the ANU Medical School, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.
Gerry Corrigan, BA, DipEd, PhD, is an Honorary Associate Professor at the ANU Medical School, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.
Ethics review
This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Australian National University (Protocol 2009/478) and all students consented to the anonymous use of their data.
