A previous study he worked on analyzed the results of a survey completed by 43 otolaryngology residents from Johns Hopkins University and Kansas University otolaryngology–head and neck surgery programs (Laryngoscope. 2009;119:2360-2365). The predominant learning style was converging (56%), followed by accommodating (19%).
Explore This Issue
November 2014
The bottom line in surgical training is, “How do we make the learning curve for individual residents more efficient?”—Nasir I. Bhatti, MD, MHS
“If the findings from our study hold for all residency programs in the U.S., that means the converging and accommodating learning styles will be predominant,” Dr. Bhatti said. “These types of learners don’t like lectures [and] they don’t like seeing videos of something being done or being shown how to do an operation; they want hands-on experience.” Outside of the operating room, these experiences could include animal labs and temporal bone labs, he said.
The Kolb Learning Style Index can be administered early in the year, on a year-to-year basis, to determine whether students’ learning styles are changing, said John A. van Aalst, MD, MA, associate professor of surgery and director of pediatric and craniofacial plastic surgery at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. “I believe that early in residency there may be changes; later in residency, as learning and teaching styles have matured, they may not change significantly,” he said. “This in itself could be a study performed by a residency program.”
In 2010, Dr. van Aalst and colleagues published a paper in the Journal of Surgical Education that analyzed the preferred learning styles of surgical residents and faculty from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (67:290-296). The researchers found that surgical residents preferred active learning with interactive teaching methods, while faculty preferred reflective learning, as in traditional, lecture-based formats.
“To me, that is interesting, because those two teaching styles are going to clash. You either have a student at the center of teaching or a professor at the center,” Dr. van Aalst said.
The take-away, he said, is that students don’t want a curriculum entirely based on lectures. Programs should incorporate small discussion groups in which residents discuss readings and present cases.
Curriculum Changes
Over the last few years, the faculty at Johns Hopkins has changed its residency curriculum to a learner-centered approach, said Douglas D. Reh, MD, assistant professor and residency program director within the department of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins.