INFORMATION AND COGNITION IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

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Ibis application requests continued funding to explore the role of structured biomedical information in the education of medical students. The studies supported by our initial grant are emphasizing the outcomes of student use of a database developed expressly to support teaming of the biomedical sciences. These studies have focused on students'performance on knowledge and problem-solving tests, as well as indicators of the underlying organization of students' knowledge in bacteriology. Results of our studies to date suggest that an intervention built around the INQUIRER database does have significant educational effects. At the same time, these results indicate the importance of examining the process of searching a database, looking closely at students' ability to retrieve information from a structured apes their information resource and how, in detail, their information-seeking behavior shapes of biomedical science. The studies proposed here wig have this focus, Under Aim 1, we will extend the INQUIRER database to the This will provide a necessary broader platform for studying er a greater period of curriculum time. Under Aim 2, we will conduct an interrelated set of studies examining how student search proficiency develops over time, the relationship between search proficiency and knowledge in a domain, and the generalizability of search proficiency to a new domain where student knowledge is minimal. Under Aim 3, we will examine in detail how students formulate searches to solve specific biomedical problems and what specific features of a problem motivate them to consult a computer-based information resource. The proposed studies will retain the structured but simultaneously naturalistic approach of our present research, using a "controlled information environment" established within segments of the medical curriculum at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. The research data will derive from students functioning in ongoing curricula, working with a The research data wi computer-based information resource to solve problems that are part of routine educational activities in the biomedical sciences.