Teaching by the Brain Rules A “How To” for the Residency Curriculum Resource Michael L. Tuggy, MD Director, Swedish Family Medicine – First Hill

What is the Residency Curriculum Resource?Residency Curriculum Resource Joint project of STFM and AFMRD, in collaboration with the AAFP Building our core curriculum WITH CONTENT on a shared website Organized by typical rotations and knowledge areas All the teaching materials you will need to teach the core of FM to your residents!

What makes this different? Compiled AAFP Curriculum Guidelines (static) into dynamic website Designed for the teacher and learner Peer-reviewed content Advanced teaching techniques required for submissions (no death by PowerPoint).

Why should I pitch in? Academic credit – peer-reviewed web publication Your work will be used widely – far more so than anything else you might contribute You will be part of a much needed collaboration Standardized teaching will yield better grads – our core mission as educators

Brain Rules? Why would we ever want to teach in a way that our residents can’t remember? The Brain Rules help us understand how we learn and remember. Concepts are built into submission requirements for the RCR content.

How we learn and remember: “The Brain Rules” – by John Medina, PhD. Key points: –You have to engage with the content to get the conceptual understanding –You should use visual or hands on learning if possible - Visual tools are powerful. (6x) –Multi-sensory input and emotion enhance memory –Problem solving enhances learning –You MUST use the right timing rules to remember (anything)

How long are our attention spans?  Or in other words, how often do you need to change the stimuli to our brains to keep our attention? minutes !

How good is our retention from traditional lectures? 10% on a warm day… (and our didactics room is really cold!)

Are the “Brain Rules” Important? Lots of learning theory backed by studies. What works actually makes sense to us as learners What is hard about the Brain Rules is actually teaching that way

The Real Question? How can we engage our learners actively in a way that allows them to retain and use what they are experiencing from your teaching?

Learning = retrievable memory and problem solving

What we know about Timing, Memory and Retention MUST repeat in some way within 30 seconds MUST repeat again at minutes Overnight activities (sleep cycle) – 1000 x autopilot Morning review (boosts another 10%) You can move from 10% up to 60% retention!!

Bad Temptations Give the learners all of the information you think they need Too much focus on factual content vs. meaning/understanding of key concepts Death by PowerPoint

Change… Your idea of what “lectures” look like Think of the value of your teaching time- it is precious Interactive Teaching Models can be applied to larger groups

A Harvard Experiment Prof. Eric Mazur- physicist Great lectures, great feedback – but they weren’t learning core concepts Changed to interactive model – marked increase in ability to answer conceptual understanding questions.

How is this different? Move from “Lecturer” to learning facilitator Expect students to come prepared Engage them with each other and directly with the material

What does this look like in practice? Less slides with text, more images/video More case-based questions More thought into WHAT the key learning points are (not just the facts) Clear plan to summarize and coalesce the key learning points.

Let’s take a look… Handout – case based teaching modelHandout – case based teaching model

Eyes off me – hands on the material Attention span is a hard master to serve. The problem with repetition… What makes it hard to teach this way? REPEAT seems repetitive

The Summary Step Uses timed repetition that will begin the memory cycle Gives you the chance to highlight salient learning point in the group discussion Repeat the key learning points at about 60 minutes

So what did you just learn? Effective teaching must actively engage learners Using visual tools activates the brain ~ 6x more hearing or reading Teach concepts more than facts using cases Use the timing rules for memory to improve retention (within 30 sec, minutes, AM Review). Summarize clearly at the end of presentation to hammer home the key learning objectives.

Questions?