This was an exciting meeting for the curriculum review board as we created a first draft of a first year curriculum based on input from faculty, staff, students and outside constituents and on the data we have gathered over the last year.
Minutes from 05-03-12 meeting
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I am very happy to see that Dr. Mitra's studies have come up. There tends to be a lot of talk about making a more active learning environment, but this always ends up being more focused on group projects and Clicker questions, which really are not effective in achieving "active learning". Dr. Mitra supports the theories behind the success of Montessori education, allowing students to have more of a hand in directing their own learning and maintaining the excitement and thrill of recording new ideas, which I believe is much more likely to create lasting memories and information recall.
First of all, thank you so much to everyone putting in all of this time to make the curriculum the best it can be for students - that's why I love this school! As a second year student, I agree with all of the suggestions listed from the meeting with student council! I liked learning about communications early, but I also think I'll really wish I had a refresher - especially on dealing with difficult/emotional situations - before clinics.
I really like the idea of integrating some classes to get rid of redundancy and maybe some lecture time that could be used for studying. My BIGGEST concern, though, is the idea of implementing a single mid-term week and finals week!! One of the things I LOVE about our school is that we have many classes that end at different times throughout the year and have manageable tests regularly. I personally would rather have a test from one or two classes each week that cover a handful of lectures than two to three months worth of material from all of our classes crammed into one week. I don't think that's an accurate reflection of what we can learn. In reality, many of us would be sleep deprived and cramming by the end of an exam week.
As far as active learning goes, yes! We may complain, but I remember that material better when I go back to study it. Depending on the class, having some kind of small activity or assignment for each lecture topic in between tests is a great way to stay on top of studying.
Thanks again, and I hope this input is useful!
I know that I feel very comfortable with the concepts that I have done group projects on and had others present to me. This is especially true with the lab "art" projects done in Systemic Pathology. I still feel that teaching others and having peers teach us is very effective. Any way of incorporating this seems to make more sense than increasing the use of clickers, as wonderful as they are when used correctly.