From Cheerleader to Coach: The Developmental Progression of Bedside Teachers in Giving Feedback to Early Learners.

Background: Medical students learn clinical skills at the bedside from teaching clinicians, who often learn to teach by teaching. Little is known about the process of becoming an effective clinical teacher. Understanding how teaching skills and approaches change with experience may help tailor faculty development for new teachers.

Twelve tips for implementing whole-task curricula: how to make it work.

Whole-task models of learning and instructional design, such as problem-based learning, are nowadays very popular. Schools regularly encounter large problems when they implement whole-task curricula. The main aim of this article is to provide 12 tips that may help to make the implementation of a whole-task curriculum successful.

Clinical teaching based on principles of cognitive apprenticeship: views of experienced clinical teachers.

Purpose: To explore (1) whether an instructional model based on principles of cognitive apprenticeship fits with the practice of experienced clinical teachers and (2) which factors influence clinical teaching during clerkships from an environmental, teacher, and student level as perceived by the clinical teachers themselves. The model was designed to apply directly to teaching behaviors of clinical teachers and consists of three phases, advocating teaching behaviors such as modeling, creating a safe learning environment, coaching, knowledge articulation, and exploration.

Method: A purposive sample of 17 experienced clinical teachers from five different disciplines and four different teaching hospitals took part in semistructured individual interviews.

Teachers as learners: the effect of bedside teaching on the clinical skills of clinician-teachers.

Purpose: To assess the impact on full-time faculty's own clinical skills and practices of sustained clinical skills bedside teaching with preclerkship students.

Method: This was a longitudinal, qualitative study of faculty who provide dedicated ongoing bedside clinical skills teaching for preclerkship medical students. Interviews were conducted during 2003 to 2007 with 31 faculty of the Colleges program at University of Washington School of Medicine.

The Maastricht Clinical Teaching Questionnaire (MCTQ) as a valid and reliable instrument for the evaluation of clinical teachers.

Purpose: Clinical teaching's importance in the medical curriculum has led to increased interest in its evaluation. Instruments for evaluating clinical teaching must be theory based, reliable, and valid. The Maastricht Clinical Teaching Questionnaire (MCTQ), based on the theoretical constructs of cognitive apprenticeship, elicits evaluations of individual clinical teachers' performance at the workplace.

Ready or not? Expectations of faculty and medical students for clinical skills preparation for clerkships.

Background: Preclerkship clinical-skills training has received increasing attention as a foundational preparation for clerkships. Expectations among medical students and faculty regarding the clinical skills and level of skill mastery needed for starting clerkships are unknown. Medical students, faculty teaching in the preclinical setting, and clinical clerkship faculty may have differing expectations of students entering clerkships.

Factors adversely affecting student learning in the clinical learning environment: a student perspective.

Purpose: To investigate, from the students' perspective, factors that may adversely affect student learning in the clinical environment.

Method: Medical students evaluated the perceived effectiveness of the clinical learning environment at the end of various clerkship rotations, such as surgery, gynaecology, paediatrics, ophthalmology. After each clerkship students answered a standard questionnaire containing closed-ended questions about supervision, patient contacts, organisation, learning effectiveness and the learning climate, as well as one open-ended question about the clerkship-site's perceived weaknesses.

Combined student ratings and self-assessment provide useful feedback for clinical teachers.

Many evaluation instruments have been developed to provide feedback to physicians on their clinical teaching but written feedback alone is not always effective. We explored whether feedback effectiveness improved when teachers' self-assessment was added to written feedback based on student ratings. 37 physicians (10 residents, 27 attending physicians) from different specialties (Internal Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Pediatrics, Neurology, Dermatology, Ophthalmology, ENT, and Psychiatry) were invited to fill out a self-assessment questionnaire on their teaching skills.

The development of an instrument for evaluating clinical teachers: involving stakeholders to determine content validity.

Background: Research indicates that the quality of supervision strongly influences the learning of medical students in clinical practice. Clinical teachers need feedback to improve their supervisory skills. The available instruments either lack a clear theoretical framework or are not suitable for providing feedback to individual teachers.

Cognitive apprenticeship in clinical practice: can it stimulate learning in the opinion of students?

Learning in clinical practice can be characterised as situated learning because students learn by performing tasks and solving problems in an environment that reflects the multiple ways in which their knowledge will be put to use in their future professional practice. Collins et al. introduced cognitive apprenticeship as an instructional model for situated learning comprising six teaching methods to support learning: modelling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection and exploration.

How interdisciplinary teams can create multi-disciplinary education: the interplay between team processes and educational quality.

Context: Many undergraduate medical education programmes offer integrated multi-disciplinary courses, which are generally developed by a team of teachers from different disciplines. Research has shown that multi-disciplinary teams may encounter problems, which can be detrimental to productive co-operation, which in turn may diminish educational quality. Because we expected that charting these problems might yield suggestions for addressing them, we examined the relationships between team diversity, team processes and course quality.

Student perceptions about the characteristics of an effective discussion during the reporting phase in problem-based learning.

To explore student perceptions of factors contributing to the effectiveness of discussions in the reporting phase of the problem-based learning (PBL) process, where students report and synthesise the results of self-study. Forty-eight Year 1 and 2 medical students participated in 6 focus group interviews about the characteristics of effective group discussions and possible improvements. The data were analysed qualitatively in several stages.

Portfolio as a tool to stimulate teachers' reflections.

Portfolios are increasingly being used to stimulate teachers' reflections. Frameworks for reflection on teaching often emphasize competencies and behaviours. However, other aspects of teacher functioning are also important, such as the teaching environment and individual teachers' beliefs, professional identity and mission.

Participants' opinions on the usefulness of a teaching portfolio.

Background: Whether teaching portfolios achieve their aim of stimulating teachers' professional development is favourably affected by the incorporation of a balanced structure and effective social interactions, such as coaching. We explored teachers' experiences with a teaching portfolio that was structured by teaching roles, portfolio assignments and conversation protocols. The related social interactions consisted of meetings with peers and personal coaches.

The relationship between professional behaviour grades and tutor performance ratings in problem-based learning.

Purpose: We investigated the influence of harsh grading by tutors on tutor performance rating by students.

Methods: A total of 187 tutors assessed students' professional behaviour in tutorial groups. Students rated tutor performance after receiving their grades for professional behaviour.

Analysis of verbal interactions in tutorial groups: a process study.

Introduction: Collaborative learning, including problem-based learning (PBL), is a powerful learning method. Group interaction plays a crucial role in stimulating student learning. However, few studies on learning processes in medical education have examined group interactions.

Complex interactions between tutor performance, tutorial group productivity and the effectiveness of PBL units as perceived by students.

Aim: Tutor performance and tutorial group productivity interact with each other in a complex manner. The aim of this study was to investigate how tutor performance, tutorial group productivity and the effectiveness of a PBL unit interact with each other. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) Does the tutor performance score differ across different levels of group productivity? (2) Does the group productivity score differ across different levels of tutor performance? and (3) Is the learning effectiveness score of a PBL unit related to tutor performance and group productivity?

Method: Students rated the tutor performance, the tutorial group productivity and the effectiveness of the PBL unit.

Development and validation of a questionnaire to identify learning-oriented group interactions in PBL.

Collaborative learning attracts attention because of its potential as a powerful learning strategy. This also holds for PBL. However, group work in PBL sometimes encounters problems and the quality of interaction is not always at the desired level.

Problem-based learning: future challenges for educational practice and research.

Context: Problem-based learning (PBL) is widely used in higher education. There is evidence available that students and faculty are highly satisfied with PBL. Nevertheless, in educational practice problems are often encountered, such as tutors who are too directive, problems that are too well-structured, and dysfunctional tutorial groups.

Student perspectives on learning-oriented interactions in the tutorial group.

Introduction: In group learning settings like problem-based learning (PBL), the quality of interaction is closely related to group success. However, research and practice have shown that the interaction in tutorial groups is not optimal. In the present study, a questionnaire was used to measure students' perceptions of occurrence and desirability of three interaction types, i.

Education research at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Maastricht: fostering the interrelationship between professional and education practice.

An academic department of education serving the entire university and a strategic choice by the Faculty of Medicine to support educational innovation through education research are the historical cornerstones of the education research program of the University of Maastricht. Over the years, the department's initial exclusive research focus on the evaluation of problem-based learning has widened to include theory-based applied research covering the broad domain of education. The program focuses on themes: the learning of students and teachers, characteristics of powerful learning environments, and assessment and evaluation of learning and teaching.

Exploration of a method to analyze group interactions in problem-based learning.

Many educational institutions use instructional approaches such as problem-based learning (PBL), in which collaborative learning plays an important role. There is little research, however, that describes which factors are responsible for the success of collaboration. The purpose of this study was twofold, i.

Validation of a short questionnaire to assess the degree of complexity and structuredness of PBL problems.

Background: In problem-based learning (PBL), problems represent the starting point of students' learning activities. Therefore, the quality of these problems should be high, in that they should be of an adequate level of complexity and structuredness. Previous research has proposed several guidelines for constructing problems, but some of them are rather vague and are not based on empirical evidence.

Quality of student-generated learning issues in a problem-based curriculum.

In a problem-based curriculum students generate learning issues that are the guidelines for their individual study. In an earlier study it was found that a useful learning issue contains a keyword that demarcates the content of a certain topic to be studied and is formulated concisely and unambiguously for all members of the tutorial group. This study investigates two questions.