This week’s readings and reflection has made me realize that a lot of the topics and trends that were discussed by Alexander (2014) as well as Johnson, Adams-Becker, Estrada & Freeman (2015) are already sprouting in medical education, even at my institution. What “wow’d” me was my lack of seeing these thing even though they are right in front of me.
Alexander (2014) describes a blended institution, in which F2F classrooms are integrated with online material and resources. Though integration is still in its infancy, I am seeing small signs of it in our undergraduate medical program. Flipped classrooms are slowly emerging in some of the subject areas. Social media is increasingly used. Many of the resources are online. Finally, there has been a significant reduction in the number of tenured staff.
Another area that has seen a significant change is in assessment. In our medical school, there is now a dedicated tech team for evaluation and assessment. This is a new development since I was a medical student, which is less than a decade ago. A great emphasis is being placed on formative assessment and measurements of learning. This parellels the trends highlighted by Johnson et al (2015). In addition, our entire medical community is heading towards competency based medical education, a large component of this being evaluation and assessment. This is a big undertaking, and as such, collaboration between universities is widely seen in order to facilitate implementation. This collaboration is in hopes to make the process efficient, uniform, and effective (Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, 2014).
One of the focuses of competency based medical education is personalization. I’m not aware of the logistics, but students and residents will be assessed for competency and learning will be personalized such that they move on to the next learning activity/skill if they are deemed competent but continue to work on the same acitivity/skill if they are not.
A focus on team based learning has also led to changes in classrooms. While there is still a large lecture theatre, there are many more small group rooms to facilitate group learning activities in the new Katz group learning centre, which was built in 2009.
As this reflection demonstrates, there are many trends that are already incorporated into medical education. All of these areas will continue to develop. One area that I think will be heavily focused on is redesigning of the learning space. I think simulation, both high and low fidelity, will play a central role in medical education, especially with our competency based focus and concerns for patient safety. This will require our learning spaces to undergo further changes and potentially a disappearance of the traditional lecture hall, as anything that could be taught in a lecture hall could easily be done online.
As for my role, I see a greater proportion of my time spent developing online materials for students and facilitating more group work than I do currently. Group work may also move to a more online formate, especially if our school becomes more distributed (with campuses in rural Alberta, such as Fort McMurry and Grande Prarie). This may become a reality if Alenxander’s “Health Nation” is realized (2014).
References
- Alexander, B. (2014). Higher education in 2024: Glimpsing into the future. Educause Review, 4(5). Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/higher-education-2024-glimpsing-future?utm_source=Informz&utm_medium=Email+marketing&utm_campaign=EDUCAUSE
- Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Estrada, V., & Freeman, A. (2015). NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: New Media Consortium. Retrieved from http://cdn.nmc.org/media/2015-nmc-horizon-report-HE-EN.pdf
- Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. (2014). Competence By Design. Retrieved from http://www.royalcollege.ca/portal/page/portal/rc/resources/cbme