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Advancing Medical Education by Optimizing the Use of Formal and Informal Curriculum Resources

Current and aspiring medical school students are inundated by curriculum resources. To optimize the curriculum resources that are offered in medical education, the present work examines both institutionally and commercially developed resources from the lens of various stakeholders through three separate, yet related, studies. The first study, a scoping review, synthesizes and recognizes gaps in scholarship regarding obstacles that underrepresented, pre-medical students encounter in applying to medical school, specifically focusing on the impact of access to commercial test preparation resources. A review of existing literature regarding this population's medical school admission difficulties yielded a majority of non-empirical, deficit-focused articles that repeated previous findings. The second study describes a pedagogical analysis of medical education commercial resources, to identify their alignment with evidence-based design and facilitate future improvement. The analysis found that nearly half of the investigated resources failed to mention guidance by a specific theory or theoretical movement; yet all resources mentioned similar functions, instructional strategies, and features. Lastly, this dissertation reports a mixed-methods study that examines undergraduate medical students' perceptions and use of formal and informal resources, to optimize the design of formal resources and integrate informal resources. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses revealed that students have more positive perceptions and frequent use of informal curriculum resources, which is largely explained by greater confidence in conducting their related educational activities.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd2020-1974
Date01 January 2022
CreatorsBagot, Ziana
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceElectronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-

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