ASSESSING MEDICAL STUDENTS' UNDERSTANDING OF APPLIED ANATOMY: THE INFLUENCE OF VISUAL RESOURCES ON THEIR PREPARATION FOR ENTRY INTO THE MEDICAL FIELD

Abstract

Exams in anatomy were timed and used visual aids including cadavers, photos of cadavers, radiographs, and images of clinical findings to assess students' topographical and practical knowledge of anatomy. Information about the incorporation of drawings into written assessments was scarce. Our understanding of how people learn from both textual and visual sources has grown, however, thanks to developments in the theory of multimodal learning. The major purpose of this study was to examine the impact of including or excluding photographs from clinically-oriented single-best-answer questions on the performance of medical students. Additionally, a questionnaire was used to examine how students' characteristics and preferred ways of assessment and teaching affected their final scores. Seven hundred and fifty-five second-year medical students from six separate UK medical schools volunteered to take part. The questions were arranged by the researcher according to the stimulus type: text alone or image. In addition to the image type and deep components, the question's emphasis on the picture's soft-tissue or bone content was taken into account. Additional studies focused on the question's complexity and its geographical anatomy. The students reviewed both their test scores and questionnaire responses. Pupils' remarks bolstered this argument even more. image depth, question difficulty, regional anatomy, picture inclusion, and students' performance were all factors that were shown to be influenced by the study. How well students perform may be greatly affected by their own preferences. Crucial in medicine for analyzing and assessing a patient's anatomy, this study sought to investigate the effects of radiological and anatomical images on commonly used written assessments. Both image and student characteristics impact students' academic progress, according to this study. To make these assessments more accurate, further research may be required.