Michael L. Tuggy, MD Director, Swedish Family Medicine – First Hill Learning in the Entertainment Age: Effective Teaching for the 21st Century Michael L. Tuggy, MD Director, Swedish Family Medicine – First Hill

What makes a great lecture? Dynamic delivery Entertaining content Humor New ideas that have POWER Pizzazz, suspense

Does a “great lecture” work? Think of a “great talk” you heard… Can you remember anything specific? Any total blanks?

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? 10-15 minutes !

Self - Assessment In the past year- have you given didactics where: (Y or N) A resident falls asleep during your presentation? A resident is texting to plan that evenings activities during your talk? You ask a great question and you get a blank stare in return? Residents complain that they had to work too much during your presentation?

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

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 Can we learn and be entertained at the same time?

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 You MUST use the right timing rules to remember (anything)

What we know about Timing, Memory and Retention MUST repeat in some way at 30 seconds MUST repeat again at 60-90 minutes Overnight activities (sleep cycle) – 1000 x autopilot Morning review (boosts another 10%) You can move from 10% up to 60% retention!!

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

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 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 model

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

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 (30 sec, 60-90 minutes, AM Review). Summarize clearly at the end of presentation to hammer home the key learning objectives.

Questions? michael.tuggy@swedish.org