A study in Medical Education (link to full text, UoE) reports on a post-elective survey in 335 students (85% response rate), median age 24, 70% female. Medical students comprised 135 of 185 healthcare students analysed as a group. No surprises that 50% had some kind of illness while away, 2% were admitted to hospital. The…

The epitaph of the lecture has been written many times – for example, see our previous post.  It is truly remarkable that it has survived the arrival of so many competitors.  This has included the arrival of books, then the advent of cheap publishing and the money to pay for it in the 19th century. …

We’re revisiting the debate about compulsory lectures in our medical school.  Attendance was poor at a series of lectures on important themes that mostly aren’t formally taught elsewhere in the curriculum. Our University regulations don’t make lectures compulsory, but in the Medical School we say that attendance is compulsory at tutorials, PBL, practicals, and clinically-based…

Joel Topf is a keen nephrology blogger and postgraduate teacher who has recently become involved in a new undergraduate programme.  Read his enthusiastic account of Team-Based Learning for second year students in Detroit. The concept of team-based learning is over 30 years old.  It was the invention of Larry Michaelson at the Univ Oklahoma Business…

Student surveys are assuming increasing importance in league tables comparing institutions, and as students are asked to pay more toward their education they are  more questioning about what we deliver.  So this question is being commonly asked in academic circles.  This isn’t a detailed scientific discussion, but here are some things that our students hate:…

Feedback is often reported to be a weakness in surveys of student experiences. This is a complex area and it is possible that the answers conceal some other message, and that students’ understanding of feedback is different from teachers’. But feedback may have deteriorated. The photo shows staff of the Dept Medicine reviewing students at…

This is when you give students the lecture to read, or watch as a video, in advance (‘homework’) and then use your class time to work through problems (or perhaps cases, in the case of medicine), answer questions.  Nicely explained from a High School example on the video below, or in more detail here at…

A request for thoughts, not a pearl of wisdom. Communication is an important issue and goes all the way from communicating with external bodies such as the GMC, to making all our students and teachers feel that they are kept in touch.  This question is predominantly about these last two groups – how do we…