Students’ Inductive Reasoning Skills and the Relevance of Prior Knowledge: An Exploratory Study With a Computer-Based Training Course on the Topic of Acne Vulgaris

Abstract

Background: The importance of inductive instruction in medical education is increasingly growing. Little is known about the relevance of prior knowledge regarding students’ inductive reasoning abilities. Purpose: The purpose is to evaluate this inductive teaching method as a means of fostering higher levels of learning and to explore how individual differences in prior knowledge (high [HPK] vs. low [LPK]) contribute to students’ inductive reasoning skills. Methods: Twenty-six LPK and 18 HPK students could train twice with an interactive computer-based training object to discover the underlying concept before doing the final comprehension check. Results: Students had a median of 76.9% of correct answers in the first, 90.9% in the second training, and answered 92% of the final assessment questions correctly. More important, 86% of all students succeeded with inductive learning, among them 83% of the HPK students and 89% of the LPK students. Conclusions: Prior knowledge did not predict performance on overall comprehension. This inductive instructional strategy fostered students’ deep approaches to learning in a time-effective way.

Acknowledgments

The study received ethical approval from the ethics committee of the Medical University of Graz and signed informed consent was given by all participating students for the scientific analysis of the anonymized data.