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Productive feedback conversations: How does a simulation-based pedagogy influence medical student feedback literacy?

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Oral Presentation

12:15 pm

28 February 2024

M205

Feedback in and on assessment

Presentation Description

Carolyn Cracknell1
Elizabeth Molloy1, Robyn Woodward-Kron1, Christy Noble2 and Anna Ryan1
1 University of Melbourne
2 University of Queensland




Background
The University of Melbourne’s medical course has a strong focus on developing students’ feedback literacy: this study involved student engagement in immersive tasks to practise feedback conversations with multiple stakeholders. 


Summary
A simulation-based program, ‘Productive Feedback Conversations in Healthcare’ was developed for first year medical students. Students work in teams through authentic feedback scenarios and conversations. Video recordings of student engagement in the tasks were collected for thematic analysis (Clarke and Braun, 2017). Our research aimed to investigate the educational potential of the program and learner feedback literacy in practice, including aspects challenging for novice students. 


Results
  • 360 first year medical students completed the program facilitated by 17 staff and 3 fourth year medical students. 
  • 7 student groups (n=28) participated in the observational research. 

Preliminary analysis of video data revealed three main themes: 

  • 1) Students used dialogic feedback models effectively but were often unaware of their purpose. 

  • 2) Students were aware of, and could establish, psychological safety in feedback conversations. 

  • 3) Students under-utilised available sources of feedback (remaining teacher centric). 

Discussion-These preliminary findings suggest that students struggled to articulate benefits of self-evaluation and tended to confine feedback exchanges to learner-teacher, overlooking inputs from peers and patients. The simulation-based prompts facilitated better comprehension of multi-source feedback and self-evaluation, while 'feedback in private' was highlighted as a significant marker of respecting learners' needs. 


Conclusions-The simulation-based activity builds off the published work in how to explicitly teach learners to seek, utilise and provide feedback in authentic learning contexts (Molloy et al, 2020; Nobel et al, 2019). 


Take-home
  • While various feedback capabilities are recognised in the literature, this study sheds light on the hierarchy of difficulty in feedback components for novice learners 

  • The tendency of students to limit feedback exchanges to learner-teacher relationships indicates the need for explicit rehearsal of soliciting information from diverse sources 


References (maximum three) 

  • 1. Clarke, V., & Braun, V.. (2017). Thematic analysis. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 12(3), 297–298. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1262613 

  • 2. Molloy, E., Boud, D., & Henderson, M.. (2020). Developing a learning-centred framework for feedback literacy. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1667955 45 (4) 527-540 

  • 3. Noble, C., Sly, C., Collier, L., Armit, L., Hilder, J., & Molloy, E.. (2019). Enhancing Feedback Literacy in the Workplace: A Learner-Centred Approach. In Professional and Practice-based Learning (pp. 283–306). Professional and Practice-based Learning. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05560-8_13 

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