Dataset Information

Assessment of scientific thinking in basic science in the Iranian second national Olympiad.

ABSTRACT:

Background

To evaluate the scientific reasoning in basic science among undergraduate medical students, we established the National Medical Science Olympiad in Iran. In this Olympiad, the drawing of a concept map was used to evaluate a student's knowledge framework; students' ability in hypothesis generation and testing were also evaluated in four different steps. All medical students were invited to participate in this program. Finally, 133 undergraduate medical students with average grades ≥ 16/20 from 45 different medical schools in Iran were selected. The program took the form of four exams: drawing a concept map (Exam I), hypothesis generation (Exam II), choosing variables based on the hypothesis (Exam III), measuring scientific thought (Exam IV). The examinees were asked to complete all examination items in their own time without using textbooks, websites, or personal consultations. Data were presented as mean ± SE of each parameter. The correlation coefficient between students' scores in each exam with the total final score and average grade was calculated using the Spearman test.

Results

Out of a possible score of 200, the mean ± SE of each exam were as follows: 183.88 ± 5.590 for Exam I; 78.68 ± 9.168 for Exam II; 92.04 ± 2.503 for exam III; 106.13 ± 2.345 for Exam IV. The correlation of each exam score with the total final score was calculated, and there was a significant correlation between them (p < 0.001). The scatter plot of the data showed a linear correlation between the score for each exam and the total final score. This meant that students with a higher final score were able to perform better in each exam through having drawn up a meaningful concept map.The average grade was significantly correlated with the total final score (R = 0.770), (p < 0.001). There was also a significant correlation between each exam score and the average grade (p < 0.001). The highest correlation was observed between Exam I (R = 0.7708) and the average grade. This means students with higher average grades had better grades in each exam, especially in drawing the concept map.

Conclusions

We hope that this competition will encourage medical schools to integrate theory and practice, analyze data, and read research articles. Our findings relate to a selected population, and our data may not be applicable to all medical students. Therefore, further studies are required to validate our results.

SUBMITTER: Azarpira N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3292993 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundClinical reasoning plays a major role in the ability of doctors to make a diagnosis and reach treatment decisions. This paper describes the use of four clinical reasoning tests in the second National Medical Science Olympiad in Iran: key features (KF), script concordance (SCT), clinical reasoning problems (CRP) and comprehensive integrative puzzles (CIP). The purpose of the study was to design a multi instrument for multiple roles approach in clinical reasoning field based on the theoretical framework, KF was used to measure data gathering, CRP was used to measure hypothesis formation, SCT and CIP were used to measure hypothesis evaluation and investigating the combined use of these tests in the Olympiad. A bank of clinical reasoning test items was developed for emergency medicine by a scientific expert committee representing all the medical schools in the country. These items were pretested by a reference group and the results were analyzed to select items that could be omitted. Then 135 top-ranked medical students from 45 medical universities in Iran participated in the clinical domain of the Olympiad. The reliability of each test was calculated by Cronbach's alpha. Item difficulty and the correlation between each item and the total score were measured. The correlation between the students' final grade and each of the clinical reasoning tests was calculated, as was the correlation between final grades and another measure of knowledge, i.e., the students' grade point average.ResultsThe combined reliability for all four clinical reasoning tests was 0.91. Of the four clinical reasoning tests we compared, reliability was highest for CIP (0.91). The reliability was 0.83 for KF, 0.78 for SCT and 0.71 for CRP. Most of the tests had an acceptable item difficulty level between 0.2 and 0.8. The correlation between the score for each item and the total test score for each of the four tests was positive. The correlations between scores for each test and total score were highest for KF and CIP. The correlation between scores for each test and grade point average was low to intermediate for all four of the tests.ConclusionThe combination of these four clinical reasoning tests is a reliable evaluation tool that can be implemented to assess clinical reasoning skills in talented undergraduate medical students, however these data may not generalizable to whole medical students population. The CIP and KF tests showed the greatest potential to measure clinical reasoning skills. Grade point averages did not necessarily predict performance in the clinical domain of the national competitive examination for medical school students.

Project description:Background Many HIV databases and applications focus on a limited domain of HIV knowledge. Since even a “simple” organism like HIV represents a very complex system with many interacting elements, the fractured structure of existing databases and applications likely limits our ability to investigate and understand HIV. To facilitate research, therefore, we have built HIVToolbox, which integrates much of the knowledge about HIV proteins and presents the data in an interactive web application. HIVToolbox allows quick and convenient hypotheses generation, experiment interpretation, and potential new drug structure creation. Methods HIVToolbox was built as a standard three-tier J2EE web application, consisting of 1) an underlying relational MySQL database, 2) a set of standard Java data access objects that pull data from the database, and 3) a set of dynamic web pages the user interacts with. HIV-1 data from external sources such as the Protein Data Bank, NCBI, Los Alamos, etc. was collected, curated, and stored in the HIVToolbox database. Additional data, such as homology and position statistics matrices, was generated from existing data. Since version 1, drug binding site and drug resistant mutation data has also been added. Results HIVToolbox was used to create several new hypotheses about HIV-1 integrase, including predicting the location of a CK2 phosphorylation site, which was later confirmed by experiment. A new version of HIVToolbox support display of the 3D locations of drug resistant mutations on surface plots of HIV proteins and the drug binding sites for structures of complexes of HIV proteins with drugs. Conclusion HIVToolbox is an open-access web application that allows virologists and structural biologists to access detailed information about HIV-1 proteins, such as sequence, structure, functional sites and relationships, homology, drug binding sites, and drug resistant mutations, and to immediately see the relationships between any or all of them. Weblink: [http://hivtoolbox.bio-toolkit.com]

Project description:BACKGROUND:The language of "participant-driven research," "crowdsourcing" and "citizen science" is increasingly being used to encourage the public to become involved in research ventures as both subjects and scientists. Originally, these labels were invoked by volunteer research efforts propelled by amateurs outside of traditional research institutions and aimed at appealing to those looking for more "democratic," "patient-centric," or "lay" alternatives to the professional science establishment. As mainstream translational biomedical research requires increasingly larger participant pools, however, corporate, academic and governmental research programs are embracing this populist rhetoric to encourage wider public participation. DISCUSSION:We examine the ethical and social implications of this recruitment strategy. We begin by surveying examples of "citizen science" outside of biomedicine, as paradigmatic of the aspirations this democratizing rhetoric was originally meant to embody. Next, we discuss the ways these aspirations become articulated in the biomedical context, with a view to drawing out the multiple and potentially conflicting meanings of "public engagement" when citizens are also the subjects of the science. We then illustrate two uses of public engagement rhetoric to gain public support for national biomedical research efforts: its post-hoc use in the "care.data" project of the National Health Service in England, and its proactive uses in the "Precision Medicine Initiative" of the United States White House. These examples will serve as the basis for a normative analysis, discussing the potential ethical and social ramifications of this rhetoric. We pay particular attention to the implications of government strategies that cultivate the idea that members of the public have a civic duty to participate in government-sponsored research initiatives. We argue that such initiatives should draw from policy frameworks that support normative analysis of the role of citizenry. And, we conclude it is imperative to make visible and clear the full spectrum of meanings of "citizen science," the contexts in which it is used, and its demands with respect to participation, engagement, and governance.