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Usmle Review Facts: Vicarious Learning Experiences
Active learning involves learning from the consequences of your own actions. Behaviors that result in successful consequences are retained while those that lead to failures are refined or discarded. Consequences inform medical students of the accuracy or appropriateness of behavior. Students who succeed at a task understand that they are performing well. When they fail, they know that they are doing something wrong and may try to correct the problem. These consequences motivate the students. For instance, practice test results during USMLE review sessions are usually posted or announced the next review session. When you see your name on the “passed” list or see a good score, you eventually feel good about yourself and will continue to be motivated to manifest the same behavior in terms of studying. On the other hand, seeing a failed rating will give you substantial amount of apprehension and will further motivate you to do more than what is needed for improvement. Students strive to learn behaviors they value and believe to have desirable consequences, whereas they avoid learning behaviors that are otherwise unsatisfying. Both in medical school and USMLE boards preparations, much learning occurs vicariously or without overt performance by the medical student in the time of learning. Common sources of vicarious learning are observing or listening to lectures, utilization of different multimedia for instruction, and reading textbooks and other sources of medical knowledge. These sources accelerate learning over what would be possible if you have to perform every behavior for learning to occur. As a USMLE mentor says: “You don't need to experience being bitten by a snake to learn that it is poisonous.” Learning complex skills that you need for the USMLE Step 2 CS typically occurs through action and observation. You usually observe models and demonstrations with appropriate explanations, before practicing them. Aspiring golfers, for example do not simply watch professionals play golf, rather they engage in much practice and receive corrective feedback from instructors. In the same way, an aspiring medical practitioner needs to engage in much practice and review and open to corrective feedbacks from mentors. Medical students who utilize observation skills are more apt to learn medical skills leading to successes than those resulting in failures. When students believe that these skills are useful, they attend carefully to the performance and demonstration and mentally rehearse these behaviors. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Gerald Faye Johnson is an Educational Content Consultant for various Step One USMLE Reviews produced by Apollo Audiobooks, LLC and Premedical Solutions, LLC. You can find the source interview podcast for this USMLE 1 resource at our website. |
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