Designing hypertext on transfusion medicine using cognitive flexibility theory

Abstract

The most insidious effect of traditional medical education is a reductive bias in thinking which results from oversimplifying complex structures, overrelying on a single example or prototype, teaching for context independence, compartmentalizing knowledge into rigid structures, and passively transmitting knowledge in ill-structured knowledge domains. The kinds of prepackaged knowledge structures that result are rigid and not easily adapted to learning contexts outside the immediate instructional context. This article proposes the consideration of a model for medical education based upon cognitive flexibility theory embedded in a hypertext. Cognitive flexibility theory avoids oversimplifying instruction, provides multiple representations of content, emphasizes case-based instruction which results in context-dependent knowledge, and supports knowledge construction and complexity which enables the learner to investigate the multiple perspectives represented in the knowledge domain in an exploratory way. Hypertext is an information retrieval and instructional environment that supports flexibility theory. The authors submit that this combination is an appropriate model for much of biomedical education, especially the introduction of transfusion medicine principles