Short and Sweet: Reducing Extrinsic Cognitive Load When Authoring Self-Study Materials for Medical Students.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Cognitive Science
• Instructional Design

Background:

• Medical school preclinical curriculum redesign emphasized faculty-created self-learning guides (SLGs) over traditional lectures.
• SLGs utilize self-paced videos, text, and images for active classroom engagement.
• Extrinsic cognitive load theory is crucial for designing effective multimedia educational materials.

Purpose of the Study:

• To understand student engagement with faculty-created self-learning guides (SLGs).
• To identify student preferences for content presentation within SLGs.
• To compare faculty practices with student preferences in SLG development.

Main Methods:

• A 40-question Likert survey was administered to faculty creators and M2 students interacting with SLGs.
• Surveys included parallel questions on SLG format preferences and engagement strategies.
• Qualitative data were gathered from a student focus group and analyzed thematically.

Main Results:

• A significant disjunction was observed: 76% of students prefer summarized content (text, images, diagrams) versus 50% of faculty who utilize this.
• Student focus groups revealed reliance on succinct post-video summaries with bullet points and bolded key terms for self-assessment.
• Students use these summaries for efficient review and second-pass studying.

Conclusions:

• Faculty should carefully consider the purposeful integration of text, video, and images in SLGs to minimize extrinsic cognitive load.
• Aligning SLG content creation with cognitive load theory principles can enhance learning efficiency and outcomes.
• Faculty development focused on cognitive load theory can improve the design and effectiveness of SLGs.