Associate Professor The University of Mississippi Brandon, Mississippi, United States
Objective : We attempted to improve student performance in a P2 integrated renal module by offering incentives to engage in better learning strategies.
Methods: In 2021, we offered bonus points if students wrote their own practice questions mapped to course learning objectives and supported by links to a therapeutics textbook. In 2022, we offered bonuses if students wrote thoughtful annotations for the assigned readings prior to class. The annotations needed to relate to a personal experience, something learned in another course, or explain how the text corresponded to course learning objectives. In 2023 we added incentives for students to review first-year course content related to the learning objectives to be taught that day. Links were provided to the P1 courses' lecture recordings and slides. Before the new material was taught, students took a quiz based on the content from the previous year's classes.
Results: Less than 10% of the class wrote practice questions. There was no improvement in exam scores. Many students commented they felt it was too much work. Participation was over 90% when students were asked to annotate textbook chapters prior to class and there was a 6.8% (p <.01) increase in exam performance (before adding the bonus points). We continued the annotations in the third year and saw an additional 4% average increase in scores on the first two renal exams when students were quizzed each day on learning objectives from courses they had taken the year before.
Conclusions: The most significant improvements came from having students annotate their textbooks readings prior to class. There was additional benefit from quizzes on material from prior classes. Asking students to write their own practice questions did not improve exam performance.
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