Educational Research: Structured Summary



|Structured Summary |

|Note about reference to dates in this example: |

|In your individual prototype absolute dates should be used (e.g., 2002-2005). |

| |

|Larry Young, Ph.D., Basic Science Department |

|Personal Statement |

|Personal |To leave everything that I touch better than I found it |

|Goals |To use my aptitude to select program areas where I can impact and improve medical education through the application |

| |of my analytical and investigative strengths |

|Personal Preparation |I am a graduate of the Baylor Master Teachers’ Fellowship. |

| |I have taken 3 semester long courses in educational research offered by the University of Houston, College of |

| |Education |

| |I have in-depth curriculum experience as Baylor’s CurrMIT (national Curriculum Database) Developer and Director, and |

| |Strong educational involvement at a national level through the AAMC |

|Personal Reflection/ |I believe that good research, including educational research, is a collaborative process. Therefore, I always seek |

|Process for Improvement |advice for research ideas from colleagues before beginning a research effort. |

| |I also attempt to refine my research with every successful effort. |

|Research Effort |

|Theme: Medical School Curriculum |

|Will students completing a problem-based, cancer prevention elective have higher retention of cancer prevention topics than students just |

|completing the required medical school curriculum? How many students will avail themselves of such an elective, given their existing workload? |

|Will allied health and medical students completing the same course score equally well on a national board self exam? |

|Given the variability in instructional activities in clinical clerkships, can the content associated with the activities be adequately captured |

|in a data-base primarily designed for the preclinical curriculum? |

|Will students in an introduction to clinical medicine course for first-year students perform as well on end-of-course assessments as did |

|students in the old course for second-year students? |

|Will performance be influenced by the specialty of the students’ clinical preceptor? |

|Contributions to the Dissemination of the Research Results of Other Investigators |

|Reviewer, Academic Medicine, Year1-Year4. |

|Chairman, AAMC Southern Group on Education Affairs, Year1-Year3. |

|Special Interest Group (SIG) Chairman, Professional Education, American Educational Research Association (AERA) meeting, Chicago, Year1. |

|Discussion of Breadth |

|All of my research effort has been in the area of undergraduate medical education in both the pre-clinical and the clinical curriculums. I have |

|also been involved in studies which involve allied health education. |

Personal Statement

Larry Young, Ph.D., Basic Science Department

1. Goals - It is my goal to impact the quality of medical education by using sound research practices to answer critical educational questions. My personal quest for self-discovery has led me to the conclusion that I have natural aptitudes and strong interests in all of the steps that lead to improved educational practices and offerings, i.e., better organization, sound program design and improved communication. It has truly become my goal to let these aptitudes guide me as I select program areas where I can impact and improve medical education. It is my goal to achieve this through the application of my analytical and investigative strengths. Evaluating a course or program and making it better or starting from scratch and creating something entirely new that meets a defined need, are the challenges that have served as the basis for my educational research and development interests.

2. Personal Preparation - After receiving a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Cincinnati and postdoctoral training in cancer biology at Baylor College of Medicine, I joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine. While I began to lecture in the basic medical pharmacology course early in my career and assume responsibility for the guidance of my department’s offerings for the College’s allied health programs, it was my role as course coordinator for the department’s basic science course for medical students and my membership on the Medical Admissions Committee that were key factors that led me to shift my career emphasis from scientific investigation to medical education and educational research.

Clearly, one of the key experiences in my development as an educator, and in expanding both my knowledge and my educational horizons, was my participation in and completion of Baylor College of Medicine’s Master Teachers’ Fellowship Program. Through this ‘hands on’, survey style program I was formally introduced to the areas of educational psychology, small group learning methods, testing theory, use of technology in the support of education, development and use of assessment tools, as well as many other useful topics. When one couples the opportunity of the Master Teachers’ Fellowship Program with the willingness of Baylor College of Medicine to let energetic and interested people involve themselves and have major responsibilities within the educational enterprise, you have a formula for involvement and for success.

3. Ongoing Self-reflection - While training as a basic scientist was certainly a sufficient preparation for the discipline-based side of medical education, it was a combination of the following experiences that contributed to my current medical education research interests: 1) a key leadership role in Baylor’s Year1 curriculum revision process (Oversight Committee), 2) initiation of a curriculum database program, 3) assuming the director’s position for longitudinal course for medical students, and 4) completion of Baylor’s Master Teachers’ Fellowship Program (Year1).

As a course director, I have tried to create an environment that fosters innovation and creativity within a medical education program. As a result, the course served as the basis for a successful National Board of Medical Examiner’s grant application, an ‘In Progress’ publication in Academic Medicine, and two RIME abstracts that were presented at a recent AAMC meeting. We have continued to innovate through the development of a course strategic plan, plans for an advanced facilitator training program, and introduction of new cases into our course that focus on team building exercises.

Structured Abstract

Larry Young, Ph.D., Basic Science Department

Theme: Medical School Curriculum

Research Question 1: Will students completing a problem-based, cancer prevention elective have higher retention of cancer prevention topics than students just completing the required medical school curriculum? How many students will avail themselves of such an elective, given their existing workload?

Investigation: (Year1–Year5) This research effort was undertaken to increase medical student’s knowledge of cancer prevention because the required curriculum was found to lack sufficient breadth and depth of information on the topic.

Support: National Institutes of Health, CA77407 (R25), “Putting Cancer Prevention into Medical Education Practice”. Principal Investigator: L.C. Young, Ph.D. ($384,378 total direct costs for 3 years; 25% effort), April 1, Year1 – March 31, Year5.

Methods: A ‘modular’ cancer prevention course was developed (2/3 PBL and 1/3 lecture) around the 7 most common forms of cancer and offered to cohorts of 40 second-year medical students over a period of 3 years. Participant cohorts and randomly selected control groups were assessed for their retention of cancer prevention knowledge one month after the last day of the elective.

Results & the Impact of Findings: Question 1: Thirty students completing the elective had significantly higher scores on the knowledge assessment than students in the control group (p ................
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