Presented By: Tawna Mangosh, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Co-Authors: Vamsi Chodisetty, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine
Connor Riegal, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

Purpose 
At CWRU, self-directed learning serves as an integral component of a student's medical education. Beyond required problem-based and interactive learning sessions, student participation and engagement with optional curricular content continues to fall short of faculty expectations. The AAMC Year 2 Questionnaire revealed that ~70% of medical students leverage third-party resources versus attend optional lecture-based sessions to solidify knowledge gained from required sessions. This is, in part, attributable to the ease of third-party resource workflow integration via a popular flashcard app used by medical students called Anki. The purpose of this study is to determine if the introduction of paired Anki flashcard decks for optional curricular content, specifically pre-clerkship pharmacology resource videos, improves students' resource engagement, satisfaction, and learning outcomes.

Methods 
With each optional pharmacology resource video, paired Anki flashcards will be developed and shared, allowing students to seamlessly integrate pharmacology learning objectives into their existing Anki workflow. Students will be asked to indicate their use of and satisfaction with these resources at the conclusion of each semester and provide comments for qualitative analysis. Subsequently, pharmacology-related summative assessments will be compared across four student cohorts: those who only use pharmacology resource videos, those who only use Anki flashcard decks, those who use both, and those who use neither resource. Additionally, student perception ratings of clinical preparedness regarding pharmacology education on the AAMC Graduation Questionnaire will be compared with previous years upon graduation of the first cohorts with this intervention.

Results 
Data collection is in-progress, but initial feedback is promising.

Conclusions
Anki flashcards will empower students to integrate optional curricular content into their current workflow, resulting in improved student engagement and satisfaction with the pharmacology curriculum. Ideally, this will illuminate a new approach applicable to other optional curricular content.