News
New teaching method to enhance critical thinking in undergraduate learning
Published on 7 July 2020
Dr Stephen Land and Dr David Booth in the D’Arcy Thompson Unit, School of Life Sciences, have published an educational article about their experience.
They used systematic review and meta-analysis to teach principles of experimentation to undergraduate biomedical science students.
Their approach steps away from the traditional journal club approach to evaluating selected “high profile” or “hot topic” research articles by showing how multiple studies reporting positive, negative or neutral results on a common research theme can be combined to provide a powerful assessment of an overall effect. Their paper provides educational resource material and performance analysis for others who may be interested to use this approach to teach students about research ethics, clinical trial regulation, experimental design, causes of study bias and statistical power.
The study was published in the June 2020 edition of Advances in Physiology Education.