TRAINING and EDUCATION
FIGURE 1.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
CREATING
Putting information together
in an innovative way
EVALUATING
Making judgements based on
a set of guidelines
ANALYZING
Breaking the concept into parts and understanding
how each part is related to one another
APPLYING
Using the knowledge gained
in new ways
UNDERSTANDING
Making sense of the material
you have learned
REMEMBERING
Recalling relevant knowledge
from long-term memory
I make sure that all of my students know that it is
important for me to hear from every student. There may
be times when I’m looking for more input from certain
people and less input from others. It does not mean that I
value some people’s input over others; it just means that I
need to make sure everyone is on track.
There are a multitude of ways that teachers can encourage quieter students to speak up, and this does not have
to happen in a confrontational way. I have found that
encouragement through eye contact, or acknowledging
with humor that one particular student is monopolizing
the conversation, can help make students comfortable.
Hearing from every student is the only way I can be
an effective teacher. I need to see what path students are
taking, where they are deviating, and how I can get them
back on track. That’s not something that can happen in
one hour with 120 students. If a student offers a wrong
answer in that setting, we don’t have the opportunity to
go through and figure out how they got to that answer
and how to get them to the right answer. In a small-group
setting, we have a better chance of figuring that out.
Working Past Word Association
The most important distinction between small group and
other types of instruction is the role of the teacher. Smallgroup instruction asks students to work among themselves, while the teacher facilitates discussion. Because
the instructor rarely interjects in the students’ conversations, we have to be mindful of when and how we choose
to do so.
It’s not just a matter of dividing the larger body of
students into small groups and letting them run with it.
As the facilitator, I wander around the classroom to listen
in on the conversations the students are having in the
small groups. If I hear a group getting off base, I try to
redirect them; if I hear a group working toward the right
answer, I try to push them a little to make sure they are
truly understanding what they are learning as it relates to
a given patient scenario.
My responsibility as a medical educator is to help
students progress along Bloom’s Taxonomy – from
memorizing facts to developing novel ideas. In one
of my classes a couple of years ago, I noticed that the
students were very good at giving me answers that were
nouns, but they would never give me verbs. It made me
realize that much of what the students were learning was
word-association. While learning that knowledge is im-
ASHClinicalNews.org
Examples from a
Case-Centered Learning Session
FIGURE 2.
portant, they also need to understand how those words
relate to each other. That’s where the verb comes in.
That ended up being the question I asked that class that
year: “Okay, you gave me a noun. Now, give me the verb.”
That forced them to think about the connections between
the new pieces of knowledge th