Applying visual mapping techniques to promote learning in community-based medical education activities

Abstract

Background Teaching and learning Community-Based Medical Education (CBME) requires the active engagement of students in various activities to cover planned curricular content. CBME being multifaceted involves careful application and formation of links when attending to community health problems and public health issues. Students often depend on factual recall rather than ‘engaging in’, to counteract the broad and comprehensive nature of CBME. This study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of Visual mapping techniques as a learning tool in a CBME program for the subject Community Medicine and thereby assist medical undergraduate students in overcoming identified learning challenges. Methodology An interventional study was conducted where medical undergraduates were randomly assigned to two different groups (each group = 30). After sensitization, a broad theme was taught to both the groups as a part of community-based teaching (CBT), each week for a month. The students in the intervention group were given the assignment to draw visual maps using the mind mapping & concept mapping techniques, after each CBT session, while the control group had Question-Answer session with built-in discussion (Conventional method) by an equally qualified, experienced faculty with no mapping assignments. A surprise written examination was conducted on the topics taught, and scores of both the groups were compared. Feedback was obtained from the intervention group. Results Mean score of the examination by the intervention group (29.85 ± 3.22) was significantly higher than and that of the control group (23.06 ± 4.09) (t = 7.14 and p < 0.05). The students shared that the assignment of drawing mind and concept maps for topics taught helped in attempting questions of the written examination by facilitating easy recall of the information learned. It aided to frame the answers to descriptive questions in a structured way with the use of keywords. However, identifying the concepts and establishing relationship between them was slightly challenging. Conclusion ‘Visual mapping’ in the form of Mind and Concept mapping was found to be an effective learning tool for multifaceted CBME especially in promoting meaningful learning and facilitating rational thinking by the medical undergraduates.

Impact of Digital Devices on Myopic Individuals

“…There are some gender-based differences in some myopic populations. But studies further concluded that genders did not significantly correlate with myopia, limiting it to some populations [39][40][41][42][43][44]. These significant developments need the consideration of current links between myopia and screen time, particularly in children and in locations where the prevalence of myopia was low before the arrival of digital devices.…”

Using Mind-Mapping to Develop EFL Students’ Writing Performance

“…So, students can use a mind map to imagine and explore connections between topics, visualize and investigate connections between ideas, grasp the links between concepts, and better understand those concepts as well as the domain to which they belong. Besides, Choudhari et al (2021) explained that a mind map is a learning tool that only provides a visual representation of a topic. In sum, mind maps are viewed as a useful tool for assisting learners in generating their ideas and transforming those ideas into writing through visualization.…”

Application of symptom-based mind mapping combined with PBL teaching method in emergency trauma standardized resident training in MDT model

“…In contrast, mind maps use a combination of text and graphics to make abstract problems concrete and simplify complex problems by linking fragmented knowledge together, so they are a good supplement to PBL teaching mode. [ 9 ]…”

“…In contrast, mind maps use a combination of text and graphics to make abstract problems concrete and simplify complex problems by linking fragmented knowledge together, so they are a good supplement to PBL teaching mode. [9] We selected 89 standardized clinical residents who rotated in the Department of Emergency Surgery of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University from January 2021 to January 2022 as the study population. We introduced the symptom-based mind maps combined with PBL teaching method into the emergency trauma training teaching in MDT mode and applied the mini-clinical evaluation exercise (Mini-CEX) and direct observation of procedural skills (DOPS) assessments as formative evaluation tools, and achieved satisfactory teaching results, which can provide a basis for promoting the clinical training teaching method of emergency surgery in the future, which is reported as follows.…”