ED-17-A. The curriculum must introduce students to the basic principles of clinical and translational research, including how such research is conducted, evaluated, explained to patients, and applied to patient care. [New standard approved by the LCME in February 2007; effective July 1, 2008.]
The faculty should specify learning objectives (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) that will, at a minimum, equip graduates to understand the basic principles and ethics of clinical and translational research, and how such research is conducted, evaluated, and applied to the care of patients. One example of relevant objectives is contained in Report IV of the AAMC’s Medical School Objectives Project (Contemporary Issues in Medicine: Basic Science and Clinical Research).
There are several ways in which programs can meet the requirements of this standard. They range from separate required coursework in the subject, to the establishment of appropriate learning objectives and instructional activities within existing, patient-focused courses or clerkships (for example, discussing the application of new knowledge from clinical research in bedside teaching activities, offering mentored projects, or conducting journal club sessions that allow students to explore the development or application of clinical and translational research). [Annotations approved by the LCME in June 2007.]
“Defining and Describing Medical Learning Communities: Results of a National Survey”
Ferguson, Kristi J. PhD; Wolter, Ellen M. MPH, MPA; Yarbrough, Donald B. PhD; Carline, Jan D. PhD; Krupat, Edward PhD
Academic Medicine: November 2009 – Volume 84 – Issue 11 – pp 1549-1556
doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3181bf5183; via Academic Medicine.
Abstract
Purpose: To investigate what is meant by learning community in medical education and to identify the most important features of current medical education learning communities.
Method: After a literature review, the authors surveyed academic deans of all U.S. and Canadian medical schools and colleges (N = 124) to identify those that had implemented a learning community. Those with student learning communities (N = 18) answered a series of questions about the goals, structure, function, benefits, and challenges of their communities.
Results: The most common primary goals included fostering communication among students and faculty; promoting caring, trust, and teamwork; helping students establish academic support networks; and helping students establish social support networks. Most deans said that students remained in the same community for all four years of medical school and that communities were linked to specific faculty and/or peer advisors. For most schools, communities included students from many class years, and participation was mandatory. Curricular purposes included professionalism training, leadership development, and service learning. Almost all schools had social functions related to their communities, and most provided career planning, group mentoring, and personal counseling.
Conclusions: Learning communities in medical education demonstrate diverse approaches to achieving the general goal of enhanced student learning. Medical school leaders considering learning communities should determine the goals they want to accomplish and be open to adopting different approaches based on local needs. Evaluation and effective monitoring of evolution are needed to determine the best approaches for different needs and to assess impact on students and faculty.
Irby, D. M. and Wilkerson, L. (2003), Educational Innovations in Academic Medicine and Environmental Trends. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 18: 370–376.
Fifteen educational innovations in academic medicine are described in relation to 5 environmental trends. The first trend, demands for increased clinical productivity, has diminished the learning environment, necessitating new organizational structures to support teaching, such as academies of medical educators, mission-based management, and faculty development. The second trend is multidisciplinary approaches to science and education. This is stimulating the growth of multidisciplinary curricular design and oversight along with integrated curricular structures. Third, the science of learning advocates the use of case-based, active learning methods; learning communities such as societies and colleges; and instructional technology. Fourth, shifting views of health and disease are encouraging the addition of new content in the curriculum. In response, theme committees are weaving content across the curriculum, new courses are being inserted into curricula, and community-based education is providing learning experiences outside of academic medical centers. Fifth, calls for accountability are leading to new forms of performance assessment using objective structured clinical exams, clinical examination exercises, simulators, and comprehensive assessment programs. These innovations are transforming medical education.
Learning Communities
Seeking to strengthen mentoring, career advising, and longitudinal relationships between students and faculty members, many medical schools are creating clusters of students and faculty that work together across multiple years of the curriculum. At Harvard, societies are composed of random groupings of students on entry to medical school and a selected group of faculty under the guidance of a Master. The Societies have curricular as well as social and advising responsibilities. Other schools use advisory colleges to provide students with mentoring and advising services.
At the University of California–Los Angeles, academic colleges have been implemented to help students make better educational use of the fourth year of the curriculum and to strengthen career advising and mentoring. The colleges are composed of faculty and students who share general career interests: Primary Care, Applied Anatomy, Acute Care, Medical Science, Urban Underserved, and MD/MBA. The colleges begin with an introductory block focused on clinical decision making and skills, followed by a year-long program of seminars, recommended electives, a longitudinal project, and career advising.
In higher education, curricular learning communities are classes that are linked or clustered during an academic term, often around an interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common cohort of students. A variety of approaches are used to build these learning communities, with all intended to restructure the students’ time, credit, and learning experiences to build community among students, between students and their teachers, and among faculty members and disciplines.
Evergreen State is the epicenter for teaching, learning, and research on learning communities.
I turned first to Wikipedia. I liked the first two paragraphs of the entry on learning communities.
A learning community is a group of people who share common values and beliefs, are actively engaged in learning together from each other. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary approach to higher education. This is based on an advanced kind of educational or ‘pedagogical’ design.[1]
Community psychologists such as McMillan and Chavis (1986) state that there are four key factors that defined a sense of community: “(1) membership, (2) influence, (3) fulfillment of individuals needs and (4) shared events and emotional connections. So, the participants of learning community must feel some sense of loyalty and beyond to the group (membership) that drive their desire to keep working and helping others, also the things that the participant do in must affect what happened in the community, that means, an active and not just a reactive performance (influence). Besides a learning community must give the chance to the participants to meet particular needs (fulfillment) by expressing personal opinions, asking for help or specific information and share stories of events with particular issue included (emotional connections) emotional experiences[2].
A book talk with professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger who examines the technology that is facilitating the end of forgetting in his book, “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age“. Mayer-Schönberger argues that in our quest for perfect digital memories where we can store everything from recipes and family photographs to work emails and personal information, weve put ourselves in danger of losing a very human quality—the ability and privilege of forgetting.
Google is hosting a forum on Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age on Oct. 27-28, 2010. Didn’t get an invitation? See below for details on tweeting questions and listening to a live stream of the talks.
Forty years after the “War on Poverty” and twenty-five years after “A Nation at Risk,” a new forum has been designed to advance a new paradigm for learning by harnessing the largely untapped potential of digital media. Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age will bring together 200 of the nation’s top thought leaders in science and technology, informal and formal education, entertainment media, research, philanthropy, and policy to create and act upon a breakthrough strategy for scaling-up effective models of teaching and learning for children. The forum will showcase cutting edge research, proven and promising models to challenge decision-makers in key sectors to help “refresh and reboot” American global leadership in education.
Please get involved in the Breakthrough Learning discussion by posting your questions, reading our blog and becoming part of our Twitter community!
And if you can’t make it to the event, please be sure to watch the live broadcasts on October 27th and October 28th.
Tim O’Reilly: The Twitter Book: Co-written by Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media, and one of Twitter’s most-followed thought leaders, with more than 250,000 followers, this practical guide will help you: * Get comfortable using Twitter, whether you’re a new user or already have some experience with it * Learn all aspects of this service quickly, with full-color illustrations on every spread * Make the most of Twitter, with advice and ideas for using the best third-party tools * Determine how Twitter can help your business, with a special chapter on viral marketing.
TED Talk: At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what’s coming in the next 5,000 days?
Kevin Kelly has been publisher of the Whole Earth Review, exec editor at WIRED, founder of visionary nonprofits, and writer on biology and business and “cool tools.” He’s admired for his new perspectives on technology and its relevance to history, biology and religion. Read more.
You should be able to carry all your relationships around via social networking sites. This is where we’re heading. You have to be OPEN to having your data shared which is a bigger step than sharing your webpage.
We’re heading toward the internet of things. Total personalization requires total transparency.
Our dependency is nothing to be afraid of. Look at our dependency on the alphabet and writing—a technology that changed our lives
WE are the web and it’s getting smarter, more personalized, ubiquitous
This machine/large organism is more reliable than its parts
One machine. The web is its OS. All screens look inside the ONE. Let the one read it. The one is us. We are in the one.
