 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Electronic Basic Medical Science Core Curriculum
Purpose
There is a growing realization that only a fraction of all available biomedical knowledge can be mastered by even the most able medical students. Beyond the difficulty of grasping so many thousands of facts and principles, medical students also need to learn to apply them critically while analyzing medical literature. How should medical schools respond to this explosive growth of information?
Innovative Features
Most medical schools respond by requiring first-year students to sit through additional lecture classes, further inundating them with material and eliminating precious time for reading and analysis. Rather than overloading the curriculum, Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons used a new strategy for teaching the basic sciences that deliberately reduces the volume of core material and engages students in learning through electronic means. The project's creators restructured the basic medical science curriculum into two levels of knowledge-basic and advanced. Level 1 comprises a manageable core of basic materials for learning fundamental principles, while Level 2 contains a menu of advanced readings for critical analysis.
The faculty furnish the basic principles for Level 1 through syllabi, while students explore advanced materials in Level 2 by reading textbooks and articles and responding to medical problems. The curriculum runs electronically over the local network and the Internet, together with syllabi, texts, medical photos, cell biology and histology slides, diagrams, textbooks, and articles.
For example, in the case of the red blood cell, Level 1 provides students with the major relevant mechanisms and mathematical formulas. In this basic treatment, the complexity of membrane transport is not covered-only the common transport processes regardless of body location. It is the function of the Level 2 menu topics to help students explore ion transport to each particular organ, because each has its own set of transporting structures and regulating signals.
Evaluation and Project Impact
Student advisory groups, faculty groups, and surveys of the entire first-year class were used to gauge the appropriate size of the core (1,200 pages of syllabus per year) and the ease of learning the core material on computers.
One of the assumptions underlying this curricular restructuring was the belief that defining an explicit and manageable core curriculum would increase comprehension and retention of basic principles. To evaluate its outcomes, test scores of participating students on the National Board of Medical Examiners, Part 1, were compared to those of non-participating students in previous courses.
Tests of participating students showed that, despite far fewer class hours and pages of syllabus, they consistently scored higher than students in the three years preceding the new curriculum. In the surveys, students applauded the curricular revisions and the electronic format that allowed them to review course materials and prepare for their labs at home.
While upholding the goals of Levels 1 and 2 learning, the project managed to reduce the number of lecture hours on the core by 40 percent, and the size of the course content (syllabus reading) by 400 pages. Because class hours were reduced, it was possible for students to schedule additional clinical activities.
It should be noted that, at the time of the project, the national average of student test scores increased. The higher quality of medical school applicants, therefore, may have affected the outcomes of the new curriculum. Nevertheless, even if the participating students performed at the same level as nonparticipants, they gained a comparable educational experience with far fewer class hours, syllabus materials, and, probably, lower costs.
Beyond the electronic science curriculum, the college installed e-mail and an electronic bulletin board for student-faculty communication, as well as a new 24-hour computer facility housing 25 new computer stations within the library. According to project staff, had FIPSE not funded the computerized curriculum, the new facility would not have become a reality.
Lessons Learned
The project alerted faculty to the need for a specific medical curriculum for developing critical thinking among students. However, the expectation that students would take the initiative in studying and solving the advanced medical problems intended for this purpose in Level 2 was only partially realized. Even though extra time and faculty consultation were provided for these learning activities, it became apparent that students needed more direction and had difficulty learning critical analysis on their own.
Project staff concluded that students need a well-defined curriculum for Level 2. That is, they need vocabulary and concepts in order to teach themselves how to evaluate and use the information that they reach during their electronic searching. The Level 2 curriculum is being modified accordingly.
Project Continuation
The students were so satisfied with the electronic format of the new curriculum that they lobbied the dean for additional funds to develop other courses on the network. Because students found "words" in the new curriculum less helpful than "pictures," staff are considering adding figures, flow-charts and tables to replace written portions of the syllabus.
Dissemination and Recognition
The faculty response to presentations of the new curriculum at the college has been overwhelmingly positive, as has the national response of medical organizations such as the American Physiological Society and the Basic Sciences Educational Forum, a group of science teachers from 120 U.S. medical schools.
Available Information
As part of the college's home page for the new basic medical science core curriculum, a help page with special search engines directs students to course materials and histology slides pertinent to 26 microscopy labs. This home page also links to various resources such as a glossary of terms, practice questions, and interactive images.
Additional information about the project can be obtained from:
Herbert S. Chase
Department of Internal Medicine
College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia University
630 West 168th Street
New York, NY 1003
Telephone: 212-305-1857
[IV. Curriculum and Instruction] [Table of Contents ] [Clemson University]
|
||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||
| |
||||||||||||
