Blending Gagne’s Instructional Model with Peyton’s Approach to Design an Introductory Bioinformatics Lesson Plan for Medical Students: Proof-of-Concept Study

Abstract

BackgroundWith the rapid integration of genetics into medicine, it has become evident that practicing physicians as well as medical students and clinical researchers need to be updated on the fundamentals of bioinformatics. To achieve this, the following gaps need to be addressed: a lack of defined learning objectives for “Bioinformatics for Medical Practitioner” courses, an absence of a structured lesson plan to disseminate the learning objectives, and no defined step-by-step strategy to teach the essentials of bioinformatics in the medical curriculum.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to address these gaps to design a streamlined pedagogical strategy for teaching basics of bioinformatics in the undergraduate medical curriculum.MethodsThe established instructional design strategies employed in medical education—Gagne’s 9 events of instruction—were followed with further contributions from Peyton’s four-step approach to design a structured lesson plan in bioinformatics.ResultsFirst, we defined the specifics of bioinformatics that a medical student or health care professional should be introduced to use this knowledge in a clinical context. Second, we designed a structured lesson plan using a blended approach from both Gagne’s and Peyton’s instructional models. Lastly, we delineated a step-by-step strategy employing free Web-based bioinformatics module, combining it with a clinical scenario of familial hypercholesterolemia to disseminate the defined specifics of bioinformatics. Implementation of Schon’s reflective practice model indicated that the activity was stimulating for the students with favorable outcomes regarding their basic training in bioinformatics.ConclusionsTo the best of our knowledge, the present lesson plan is the first that outlines an effective dissemination strategy for integrating introductory bioinformatics into a medical curriculum. Further, the lesson plan blueprint can be used to develop similar skills in workshops, continuing professional development, or continuing medical education events to introduce bioinformatics to practicing physicians.

Bioinformatics Bootcamp: A model for training clinical researchers

“…www.iscb.org,), courses (biohpc.learn.in.th/) 20,21 , programs 21,23 , summer internships [17][18][19] , and workshops are avenues used to establish training in this area. Countries like Africa [24][25][26][27] and Thailand 28 have made tremendous efforts to increase bioinformatics capacity in their nations.…”

Creating a ‘simulacrum’ of in-class learning environment employing distance learning modality during the COVID-19 pandemia: Quod Erat Demonstrandum

“…The delivery of the virtual off-campus live sessions employed a blended pedagogical framework [24]. The framework employed (A) Gagne's nine events of instruction [27], which is based on the information processing model of the mental events that occur when adults are presented with various stimuli; and (B) Peyton's four-step approach [28], an instructional model for teaching practical skills.…”

“…This, in turn, necessitates that a signi cant part of a session in the course should be earmarked for the students to apply the disseminated theoretical knowledge/concepts to analyse data using a speci c statistical software package (hands-on exercises). Therefore, for the framework, we utilized both Gagne's nineevents of instruction and Peyton's four-step approach, where speci c steps from Gagne's model were blended with steps from Peyton's approach [24] (Table -1). Also, this approach was previously implemented with success in the delivery of biochemistry (Banerjee et al, manuscript under preparation); molecular biology and genetics [24]; and anatomy courses (Naidoo et al, manuscript under review) in the MBRU curriculum, yielding positive feedback from students.…”

“…Secondly, by exploiting the consequential and improved model, we derived all-purpose teaching principles that can be employed to strategize a guide-plan for any DL course (Figure -1). Thirdly, we expounded on the implementation of these derived all-purpose teaching principles during the COVID-19 lockdown using the exemplar of the fundamentals in epidemiology and biostatistics (FEB) course in our competency-based medical curriculum, where virtual live-sessions integrated into the DL framework were designed according to a blended approach that involved Gagne's nine-events of instruction and Peyton's four-step approach [24] (Table -1, Figure -1 ). We chose the FEB course to demonstrate the DL framework as this course requires dissemination of cognitive, practical and non-cognitive skills.…”

Peer Review #1 of "The effectiveness of the Peyton’s 4-step teaching approach on skill acquisition of procedures in health professions education: A systematic review and meta-analysis with integrated meta-regression (v0.1)"

“…One of the strengths of Peyton's teaching approach is that it can be effectively combined with other instructional design strategies, which allows the simultaneous delivery of theoretical concepts along with complex procedural skills. For example, Tambi et al (2018) and colleagues combined Gagne's instructional model (Gagne et al 2005) with Peyton's teaching approach to design a bioinformatics lesson plan for medical students and Ng (2014) combined both teaching approaches for slit-lamp teaching. However, one could assume that the step-by-step approach would require considerably more time for teaching.…”