Time and its relationship to help-seeking behavior toward learning strategy resources with entering medical students

Abstract

In medical school, the rigorous pace of instruction and large volume of content can create difficulties for some students and medical institutions are exploring ways to incorporate pedagogical communication and online innovations in order to help students be successful. This study monitored entering Year 1 students’ intent to use help from face-to-face and online learning strategy resources at St. George’s University. The purpose of the study was to explore if entering medical students’ perceived they had enough discretionary time available to seek help for an academic problem using the learning strategy resources at SGU. This study used an action research case study methodology using mixed methods data collection and analysis that was guided through a pragmatic worldview. The relationship between entering medical students intent to seek help when faced with learning challenges and their actual help sought, where these students were most likely to seek academic help, and gender bias was investigated through pre- and post-questionnaires. How discretionary time was perceived to be a factor in seeking help, given that discretionary time allocation is so limited in medical school, was explored through semi-structured interviews. The results demonstrated that the majority of entering Year 1 medical students reported intention to seek help during orientation and actual help sought during the term had the highest matches with the Internet and learning strategist. Just under half of the interviewees indicated that they had explored the online learning strategy resources at least once. Results also showed that there was some gender bias in help-seeking behavior but the sample size was too small to make more than generalities. The findings indicated that students’ perception of discretionary time was not a major factor in deciding to seek or not seek help from learning strategies resources. Other factors indicated to be important to students’ decisions to seek help could be summarized by the category title “unambiguous communication.” Although this study focused on specific learning strategy resources in a particular context, the results and findings may provide benefit to other professional studies schools with similar time pressures on their students.