Key Features

A male student looking at a computer screen

Flexibility

  • Emphasize independent study and scheduling choices
  • Begin mentored experiences in research during the first 18 months, and provide multiple opportunities in the schedule for a dedicated four month research block and future ongoing research experiences
  • Redesign elective structure to supplement educational experiences in core curriculum

Process of Teaching and Learning

  • Focus on the amount of student-focused and self-directed learning time instead of calculating the amount of teaching time
  • Promote student responsibility for learning
  • Hold 3 interactive student-centered discussions/week
  • Schedule a maximum of 20 contact hours/week (including student-centered discussions, laboratories, lectures, clinical skills, etc.)
  • Emphasize clinical mastery through clinical exposure and simulation.
  • Emphasize learning from multiple sources (including a rich array of web-based resources) and limit the use of an extensive syllabus

Content

  • Initiate medical school education at the macro level with a focus on the social and behavioral context of health and disease in the broader population.
  • Identify new educational focus at the interface of clinical medicine and public health
  • Weave biomedical science, population health, scholarship, clinical medicine, leadership and civic professionalism longitudinally across the curriculum
  • Create clinical experiences within biomedical and population sciences, as well as basic science instruction within clinical rotations
  • Recommit to clinical mastery in the craft of Medicine

Assessment

  • Change assessments from methods that emphasize passive learning (e.g., the memorization and recall of specific facts to methods that emphasize active learning and concept synthesis
  • Define core competencies for clinical mastery
  • Evaluate all elements of the new system rigorously

Faculty Support

  • Provide development around interactive teaching and facilitation of student-centered discussions
  • Foster clinical teaching faculty who directly observe students' clinical skills
  • Provide financial and academic support for faculty curriculum leaders during curriculum design, implementation and ongoing delivery
  • Provide enhanced financial support and academic rewards for the instruction of medical students