Thursday, March 03, 2011

The Learning Studio

The School of Medicine at the University of Virginia has created a room called "The Learning Studio."


Photo Credit: Norm Shafer (original source)
[I]t coalesced into an unusual, functionally innovate design, one built around a new pedagogy.
Shades of the Collaboratory at Rutgers. You see, UVA figured something out:
Most universities continue to follow a blueprint introduced in 1910, which called for two years of in-depth study of the basic sciences followed by two years of clinical experience. A cookie-cutter approach, it means that students spend two years sitting through long lectures and regurgitating facts on tests, followed by the shock treatment in their third year of suddenly dealing with patients in a hospital ward.

“It’s become pretty clear in the last couple of decades that this is probably not the best way to learn something as complex as medicine,” says Randolph Canterbury, the medical school’s senior associate dean for education. “The idea that physicians ought to learn the facts of all these various disciplines—anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and so forth—to the depth that we once thought they should doesn’t make much sense.”

About half of all medical knowledge becomes obsolete every five years. Every 15 years, the world’s body of scientific literature doubles. The pace of change has only accelerated. “The half-life of what I learned in medical school was much longer than what it is today,” adds Canterbury, a professor of psychiatric medicine and internal medicine.
Huh. Who knew? Oh yeah.

So what happens in that Learning Studio?
. . . In teams of eight, the students debate a patient case: Walt Z., a 55-year-old chemist, comes into your clinic complaining of intermittent chest pain. As his doctor, you’ve arranged for an exercise stress test. But Walt Z. is an informed consumer of health care, and he has lots of questions about the test’s accuracy in diagnosing blockage in coronary arteries. Five large media screens hanging throughout the room delineate his medical details and a series of multiple choice questions.

Gone is the traditional 50-minute lecture. (Also gone is paper, for the most part.) The students have completed the assigned reading beforehand and, because they’ve absorbed the facts on their own, class time serves another purpose. Self-assessment tests at the start of class measure how well they understand the material. Then it’s time to do a test case, to reinforce their critical thinking and push their knowledge and skills to another level.

. . . In this “flattened classroom,” as it’s been described, the traditional top-down educational approach is reconfigured and the responsibility for learning shifts to the student.
Interesting. What about accountability?
Problem solving by teams mirrors the reality of health care today. “The traditional approach has been one patient, one doctor,” says Waggoner-Fountain. “Now, it’s one patient, one doctor and a team, in part because medicine has gotten more sophisticated and patient expectations are different.”

Studies also show that individual grades improve when working within a team. The first-year students have embraced it. Not isolated in auditorium seats bolted to the floor, they can easily move and mingle because everything is in the round.

“Working in a team reinforces what you learn in class,” says Chelsea Becker (Med ’14). “We all have different backgrounds and everyone knows something different.” Science majors don’t hold dominion; the class comprises more than 60 different majors, from astrochemistry to art.

“It allows us to teach each other,” adds Tom Jenkins (Med ’14), who estimates he’s collaborated with just about every person in the class at this point. “I think that helps with retention.”
I could go on, but it would be better if you just go read the article. Okay, just one more quote:
Every team experience was singular. “We have the sense that education should be standardized and everyone should have the same experience, but that’s not really the case for us,” says Littlewood. “The new Carnegie report talks about having standardized outcomes for individualized experiences, and I think there’s no better example than over here.”
So, let's sum up. Teaching like it's 1910 doesn't make much sense (teacher-centered, lecture-oriented, fact-recall, paper-based, standardized instruction.) Ahh, so glad all the current education reform in K-12 matches up with this vision. They have to be college-ready, ya know.

10 comments:

  1. I believe the Learning Studio is a great idea. Instead of lectures and written papers, the idea of giving students actual patient cases they may face and have them debate it as a team gives them the chance to see how things will work in real life. It gives the students experience with critical thinking and problem solving. It allows the students to apply what they are learning from books in real life situations. I think it is a good thing that University of Virginia is doing by stepping away from the traditional lecture class and to a more student oriented class.

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  2. As an education student, I have been taught over the past few years that learning is more than merely digesting and regurgitating information. This "learning studio" is not a new idea; it is merely using educational methods found to be effective with younger students in which students are put in scenarios and required to make decisions. It is surprising, however, that it took so long for it to be put to use at the collegiate level.

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  3. The Learning Studio implements many techniques that are beneficial for student learning. It is a form of cooperative learning, in which students work together to find answers. This instructional method, very different from the traditional approach places the responsibility on the students. Many times this is effective for younger students because they are able to develop autonomy, but it is also a good idea for college students. As an education major, my program consists of class lectures, but I also participate in field experience where I go into classrooms beginning the first semester of the program. This is very useful and allows me to apply what I am learning in the classroom, and I think it is good to see other areas of study implementing the same setup.

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  4. Hi Mr. Fisch,

    My name is Brittni Sasser and I am a student in Dr. Strange's EDM310 class. The Learning Studio sounds like a fantastic idea. It is a great idea to have students working together in groups because each students will bring something different, which will make the group grow in learning together. I am a Elementary Education major, so I believe in starting group work early. Students will then be more prepared for group work in the years to come. If you would like to check out my blog, click here!

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  5. I agree too that it's good to have a learning studio

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  6. Dear Mr. Fisch,

    I believe that more colleges should try this and also I think Highschools should also try this, mostly if it is a large Highschool. I also believe that the "Learning Studio" is a great idea because the jobs that are getting created right now usually involve team/group work and the Learning Studio helps you become better at working with other people, and gets you the education the student needs. I thank you for posting this on your blog and i hope someone will read and try it at a college or highschool so it can spread all across the nation and hopefully increase education in the U.S.

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  7. I read Mr. Fisch's “The Learning Studio” which talked about how students have taken a different approach in college to learning medicine. Instead of being lectured by a teacher for an hour students prepare themselves before class and then rate themselves on how they understand the content. They then break up into teams and work on a patients problems in the learning studio. This way of teaching has greatly helped students learn, work as a team, and increase their grades in the class. If this is how colleges teach then how come our kindergarten through the twelfth grade don't teach like that. If we started teaching like that now in our own schools students could possibly learn more and develop needed communication skills. I think learning studios should be put in schools all over the country.

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  8. Dear Mr. Fisch,
    Your article The Learning Studio gets my attention because I feel that this is the way that students should be learning today. The methods used by the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia in “The Learning Studio” such as working with groups, not being lectured then tested and so on should be what a class room is like now and in the future. I think that these ways of learning and teaching would really benefit the students today because if students collaborate with their peers today and try to solve problems, they will learn this skill now and could use it in the future. I also agree that the lecture and testing style of teaching is not effective because I am a student and I know that when being lectured, all that the information the teacher is saying is doing is going through one ear and coming out the other. Then after not fully understanding the lecture, students cram for tests, which don’t help a student understand the material, and then they just forget about it after the test is over. This learning studio should be the classroom of students today because it would be more effective in getting kids educated and prepared for the real world.

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  9. Dear Mr. Fisch,
    I liked your article The Learning Studio because I feel that this is the way that students should be learning today. The methods used by the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia in “The Learning Studio” such as working with groups, not being lectured then tested and so on should be what a class room is like now and in the future. I think that these ways of learning and teaching would really benefit the students today because if students just think with their peers today and try to solve problems, they will learn this skill now. I also agree that the lecture and testing style of teaching is not effective because I am a student and I know that when i'm being lectured, I zone out. Then after not fully understanding the lecture, students cram for tests, which don’t help a student understand the material, and then they just forget about it after the test is over. This learning studio should be the classroom of students today because it would be more effective in getting kids educated and prepared for the real world.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Dear Mr. Fisch,

    Your article The Learning Studio attracts to me, because I feel that this is the way that students should be learning today. The methods used by the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia in “The Learning Studio” such as working with groups with a lot of projects in every class that you use. Also what I think is cool is not being lectured then tested directly after the lecture. I think that these ways of learning and teaching would really benefit the students today because if students work together and think as one with their peers today, they will learn this skill now and could use it in the future. I also agree that the lecture and testing style of teaching is not effective because I am a student and I know that when being lectured, all that the information the teacher is saying is doing is going through one ear and coming out the other. Then after not fully understanding the lecture, students cram for tests, which don’t help a student understand the material, and then they just forget about it after the test is over. This learning studio should be the classroom of students today because it would be more effective in getting kids educated and prepared for the real world.

    ReplyDelete