Immune Response to an Allergen/Helminth: An Interactive Learning Module

Abstract

Abstract Introduction The purpose of this interactive module is to aid medical students in the organization of their knowledge of the immune system by providing an audiovisual resource showing/explaining typical immune responses to an allergen or helminth. The module is based on a diagram describing the various steps in such an immune response. It was created after students' surveys indicated they did not feel they could assemble what they were learning into a comprehensive big picture for later application. Methods Recent educational studies have demonstrated that repeated self-testing is a very efficient learning strategy. Therefore, we included pre/post self-tests in the module. Students submit answers to the pretest questions in order to access the rest of the module, a series of sequential narrated steps with diagrams that visually demonstrate the steps in this type of immune response. Learners navigate through the individual steps of the response. A review diagram is displayed after the last step and followed by the posttest. Results We published this module on our institutional Blackboard learning management system and made it available to first-year medical students (N = 104). Eighty-four percent of the students accessed the module at least once. About half of the students who accessed the module completed both pre− and posttests. Importantly, posttest scores improved by 20% on average compared to pretest scores, demonstrating the efficacy of the module as a learning tool. Interestingly, most students used the module repeatedly (almost seven times on average), improving their test scores with each subsequent attempt. Of 40 medical students who participated in a survey, all (100%) indicated that diagrams of the sort we used are effective learning tools, helping them to identify weak areas in their knowledge (94%) and understand the big picture (97%). Discussion This resource should prove useful to medical educators teaching immunology and to their students, especially in medical schools with modern and highly integrated curricula.

Keywords

• Immune Response
• Allergy and Immunology
• Self-test
• Learning Module