Reasons for suboptimal learning in medical microbiology

ABSTRACT

Medical microbiology presents a challenge to undergraduate students, mostly due to its extensive content and complexity of unfamiliar terminology. In addition to a narrative review of the literature, we report findings on students’ motivation for and approach to learning in the Infections module of an undergraduate medical curriculum, and their perceived lack of retention of knowledge acquired in the module, as determined by a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire. When students experienced information overload, they reverted to performance goals and the wrong motivation for learning. Their focus turned primarily to being successful in tests and examinations, and they consequently adopted a surface approach to learning. Surface learning and memorisation of facts without understanding its content usually result in moderate retention of knowledge, which could handicap the development of clinical reasoning. However, the concern about students’ perceived poor retention of knowledge can be laid to rest – the prognosis is not discouraging after all.

KEYWORDS:

• Suboptimal learning
• medical microbiology
• information overload
• motivation

Acknowledgement

Dr Ronette Lategan, for assistance with the final language editing of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, humanitarian and founder of the Art of Living Foundation, Bangalore, India (Chetty 2005).

2. By the time the participants for the focus group interviews were selected, one of the students who completed Questionnaire I and participated in the introduction of the game, did not pass a supplementary examination and returned to the second year.

3. See endnote 2.