AAN Education Research Grant
The AAN Education Research Grant program offers financial support to promote educational research in neurology, granting two to four awards of $5,000 to $10,000 based on the proposal and merits of the project. The goals for the grant are to help improve the neurologic education of AAN members, including neurology residents and fellows, medical students, and non-neurologists, as well as promote career development of neurologic educators.
Application Deadlines
The timeline for proposed grant projects to be executed is from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2010.
The deadline to submit a proposal for the 2010 Education Research Grant has passed. Applicants will be notified in late October or early November.
2006 Education Grant Winners:
Colin Chalk, MD
"The Script Concordance Test: A New Tool for Assessing Clinical Judgment in Neurology"
"Study of Inter-rater Reliability, Variability and Concurrent Validity of the Neurology Examination Exercise"
2007 Education Grant Winners:
Thomas I. Cochrane, MD, MBA
"Improving Ethical, Relational, and Communication Skills for Neurology Residents"
Richard S. Isaacson, MD
"Evaluating the effectiveness of Continuum as a Teaching Tool for Medical Students"
2008 Education Grant Winners:
Douglas P. Larsen, MD
"Effects of Repeated Testing by Simulation and Written Tests on Long-Term Retention of Neurological Information: A Randomized, Controlled Trial"
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Evidence from cognitive psychology suggests that repeated testing of information leads to better long-term retention than repeated study.
OBJECTIVES: 1) To evaluate whether information taught in a neurological education setting is better retained over six months through repeated testing than through repeated study. 2) To evaluate the effect of test format (i.e. simulation versus written tests) on final retention.
METHODS: After a small pilot phase to evaluate the logistical protocol for the study, 60 first-year medical students will be recruited to participate during their neural sciences course. All subjects will participate in a teaching session that will cover three neurological topics. Over the subsequent month, subjects will then participate in five additional testing sessions. Participants will be randomly assigned to repeated simulation testing, written testing, and study for each of the three topics. All testing methods will be counter-balanced by topic across participants. Six months later all participants will then take final tests over all three topics using both simulation and written tests.
ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We hypothesize that information over which participants have been repeatedly tested will be better retained than information that participants have repeatedly studied. We also hypothesize that participants will perform better on the final simulation test on topics over which they have been tested by simulation and better on the final written test on topics over which they have been tested by written tests.
SIGNFICANCE: This study will help to establish an evidence-based instructional tool to help educators increase the long-term retention of information.
David E. Newman-Toker, MD, PhD
"The Complaint-Focused Neurologic History & Physical: "20 Questions" Diagnostic Gaming to Build Diagnostic Reasoning Skills—Software Platform Development & Pilot Testing in Clerkship Students
ABSTRACT
Misdiagnosis of neurological conditions is common in frontline healthcare settings, sometimes with serious consequences. Not every patient with common neurological symptoms (e.g., dizziness, headache, back pain) can be seen by a neurologist, so prevention of morbidity from neurologic misdiagnosis requires diagnostic education of non-neurologists. Passive forms of teaching (e.g., traditional lecture) have not been shown to change physician behavior, but active learning strategies have. Computer-based diagnostic case simulation capitalizes on active engagement, repetition, and competition to solidify learning. Fully-adaptive, screen-based simulators have been developed that enable processing of free-text input and offer probabilistic responses to management suggestions by learners. However, these have development costs of at least several hundred thousand dollars and then become static educational artifacts due to prohibitive costs of reprogramming. A low-cost alternative is non-interactive paper cases, but this lacks the power of controlled release of information at the learner's choice (at the core of bedside reasoning). We believe intermediate solutions should capitalize on extended multiple choice formats to offer educational interactivity at low programming cost. Creation of an intermediate user (case developer) interface would enable rapid deployment of new cases. We propose to build such a shell and populate it with cases related to a single "model" symptom (dizziness), then pilot test the system's usability and efficacy among medical students during a neurology clerkship. The software platform will enable diagnostic case-scenario gaming using a "20-questions" paradigm (e.g., "each element of history or exam you select costs time; you have 20 minutes to make the correct diagnosis").