The value of a writing center at a medical university.

Background: Students often enter graduate healthcare/biomedical schools with insufficient undergraduate instruction in effective writing, yet the ability to write well affects their career opportunities in health care and in scientific research.

Purpose: The present study was conducted to determine the value and effectiveness of instruction by faculty with expertise in teaching writing at a writing center at an academic health science center.

Methods: Two separate sources of data were collected and analyzed.

Lecture recording system in anatomy: possible benefit to auditory learners.

The literature reports that using Learning Recording Systems (LRS) is usually well received by students but that the pedagogical value of LRS in academic settings remains somewhat unclear. The primary aim of the current study is to document students' perceptions, actual pattern of usage, and impact of use of LRS on students' grade in a dental gross and neuroanatomy course. Other aims are to determine if students' learning preference correlated with final grades and to see if other factors like gender, age, overall academic score on the Dental Aptitude Test (DAT), lecture levels of difficulty, type of lecture, category of lecture, or teaching faculty could explain the impact, if any, of the use of LRS on the course final grade.

Teaching professional writing in an academic health sciences center: the Writing Center model at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Background: Writing is taught as professional competency in higher education generally, but the health science education literature emphasizes writing as a pedagogical means rather than a professional end. The Medical University of South Carolina established a Writing Center in 1994 to teach professional writing.

Summary: This report describes the rationale for profession-specific, graduate-level writing instruction; summarizes the Writing Center model; and reports usage data.