Summary Week 12

We have completed the second quarter of the lab! This week we had our last lab conference call for the quarter. During the call our goal was to come to a resolution on the subject of the article that we are to write in the final quarter of the lab. During the previous week students proposed various topics for the paper, but most were not consistent with the data that we had available. During the call the faculty laid out the data we had available and discussed various scenarios, we came to the realization that the best solution was to go with the topic of the student poster: Physician relationships in the oldest old.

We took a new approach to making the decision, which has gotten a number of positive comments from students – we basically discussed the issues as we would in a face to face lab, and reached consensus on the topic. The students had the opportunity to hear how the faculty went about making the decision, and the issues that we felt were important.

I have collected all of the research surveys from both the lab and control students which showed a significant pattern of learning and an increase in self-efficacy in the lab students. The control students’ scores stayed at about the same level. So we have clearly shown that being in a lab increases research knowledge and research confidence over a non-applied curriculum.

We will have a week break now and be back to the lab the first week of December

Lee Stadtlander