A Simple and Sustainable Exercise to Enhance Student Self-Reflection on Error-Making, Focus Support, and Guide...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Cognitive Psychology
• Assessment and Evaluation

Background:

• Self-reflection is crucial for medical professionals but often limited in students.
• Inadequate self-reflection hinders clinical decision-making and current learning.
• Multiple-choice questions (MCQs) may offer less insight into learning deficits compared to other assessment methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and evaluate the Error Reflection Method (ERM) for enhancing medical students' self-reflection.
• To identify learning-behavior deficits and test-taking errors among medical students.
• To inform curricular design and academic support services based on student error patterns.

Main Methods:

• Developed a 10-item Error Reflection Method (ERM) categorizing errors into 'test-taking' and 'learning-behavior' types.
• Undergraduate medical students used the ERM during formative assessment review sessions.
• Analyzed 3,775 student-identified errors to assess the ERM's descriptiveness and utility.

Main Results:

• The ERM effectively categorized 96% of student-identified errors.
• Learning-behavior errors were most common (76%), but test-taking errors were also significant (19%).
• The most frequent error ('familiar but couldn't answer') suggests shallow learning, guiding curriculum toward active learning.

Conclusions:

• The ERM is a robust tool for identifying learning deficits, improving student performance, and guiding curricular development.
• Findings support targeted academic support for both learning behaviors and test-taking skills.
• The ERM can foster a learning-focused assessment culture and aid faculty development.