What's on the News? The Use of Media Texts in Exams of Clinical Biochemistry for Medical and Nutrition Students

Health-related popular articles are easily found among media sources. With the increasing popularity of the internet, medical information - full of misconceptions - has become easily available to the lay people. The ability to recognize misconceptions may require good biomedical knowledge. In this sense, we decided to use articles from the internet as part of a formal exam to evaluate students' learning of Clinical and Applied Biochemistry (CAB). This test, known as the True-or-False (T-or-F) exam, is made up of statements found online that are judged by freshmen medical and nutrition students taking Basic Biochemistry. In the last four teaching-semesters, students' acceptance and responses to T-or-F exam on CAB were evaluated through questionnaires (using a 0-4 Likert scale). Results from 258 students revealed that 71, 87, and 94% of them believed, respectively, that the exam was (i) difficult, (ii) of good quality, and (iii) that using media-questions is relevant for evaluating the learning of CAB. Moreover, the average grade in the T-of-F exam was 5.85 (out of 10). This low average is probably because students are not familiarized with this sort of examination that does not emphasize on memorizations of biochemical pathways and processes - it instead evaluates mostly the comprehension and application of knowledge, levels 2 and 3 in Bloom's scale. Such conclusion was possible by analyzing 192 questions in four exams - 67% were at levels 2, 3 or above. This kind of media-based exam could be well applied to several other disciplines in health sciences.