Teaching & Excellence Series

2024 Fall Series

• August 28, 2024 - Item Writing

  The session is designed to acquaint faculty with writing National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) style single-best answer multiple choice questions (MCQs). Attendees should read the pre-work to prepare for in-class discussion. Every participant should write two NBME-style questions for peer review and discussion during the session.

• September 19, 2024 - Developing Assessments and Blueprinting

  A question that all faculty confront is how do we know that the students learned what we are teaching? The evidence that we gather is through assessments; tests that tell us the state of learning by the students. Assessments, for these purposes, can be formative or summative (as discussed in May). But how does the faculty member actually ensure that they have the appropriate evidence?

  In the workshop, attendees will examine how to map learning objectives to assessments, review the College of Medicine guidelines for developing assessment blueprints, and use post examination data to identify gaps in student learning through working through case examples.

• October 23, 2024 - Introduction to the Foundational Competencies for Undergraduate Medical Education

  Unlike most other countries, the USA had not previously developed a series of educational competencies for undergraduate medical education (UME). In 2022, three sponsoring organizations (AAMC, AACOM, and ACGME) started the process of developing a set of uniform competencies for UME. The final version was published in September 2024. This workshop is the introduction to the competencies to start the discussion of whether these competencies should be adopted as the new medical education program objectives (MEPOs) for the College of Medicine.

• November 14, 2024 - Criterion vs Norm Referenced Assessments

  In a competency-/outcomes-based education system, we must collect evidence to demonstrate student learning and achievement of the competencies/outcomes. As learning occurs on a learning curve, and is also subject to “forgetting,” the question is what type of evidence and when that evidence should be collected. This workshop will focus on how to use criterion-referenced and norm-referenced assessments to collect evidence of learning.

• December 16, 2024 - Assessments with Behavioral Anchors

  Most clinical and professionalism assessments are conducted through observation of learner performance. These are often assessed through Likert scales or some other scale with gradation of low performance to high performance. However, interrater reliability in such evaluation mechanisms is low for many reasons. To mitigate this effect and to encourage more consistent assessment of student behaviors, many use behavioral anchors in these performance reviews. This workshop will focus on how to think about developing behavioral anchors and the utility of such assessments.

2024 Spring Series

• June 2024 - Providing Student Feedback and Narrative Assessments

  Providing student feedback is an essential element in the improvement cycle for student learning. Feedback can be formal or informal. This workshop will focus on how to provide feedback in different settings as applied in medical education.

  For this workshop, attendees should prepare by reading select sections of papers regarding these topics. The initial portion of the workshop is devoted to small groups developing narrative assessments for learners in case scenarios. The last portion of the workshop will be one-on-one role playing on providing feedback.

• May 2024 - The Use of Diagnostic, Formative, Summative Assessments

  Assessments can be considered diagnostic, formative, or summative depending on the purposes of the assessment. This workshop will focus on the differences between the three and how they can be used to enhance an educational program for medical students.

  For this workshop, attendees should prepare by reading select sections of papers regarding these topics. When they arrive, there will be a brief didactic activity. Following the didactic activity, the workshop attendees will work in small groups on the application issues of these types of assessments (when, where, why, how) within a competency-based medical education approach.

• April 2024 - What are Entrustable Professional Activities and the Milestones Program?

  Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) were introduced by Olle ten Cate in 2005 as a different approach to graduate medical education. This approach has been adopted nearly universally around the world for graduate medical education and has been tried for undergraduate medical education (UME). In the United States, the EPA approach for UME has not been particularly successful. The Milestones program from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) utilizes a time-dependent variation of EPAs. This workshop is focused on the differences between EPAs and the Milestones program, and how elements could be adopted for undergraduate medical education.

  For this workshop, attendees should prepare by reading select sections of papers regarding EPAs and the Milestones Program. To start the workshop, there will be a quiz (identical to an iRAT of a TBL) to start the session. This will be followed by a tRAT. The remainder of the session will be an exercise wherein attendees will work in small groups addressing implementation issues of EPAs at the UME level.

• March 2024 - The Educational Quality Improvement Cycle

  Continuous quality improvement is an essential and critical component of contemporary medical education. This applies granularly to single sessions within a course or a course as a whole, and more globally to an entire curriculum. The purpose of this workshop is to address the principles behind continuous quality improvement using the PDSA cycle introduced by W. Edwards Deming.

  For this workshop, attendees should prepare by reading select sections of papers regarding these topics. Initially, the session leader will provide an introduction and review brief lecture. In the session, small groups will develop an example of using the PDSA cycle to address an assessment issue, a session issue, a course issue, or a curriculum issue. At the end of the session, there will be a presentation of each of the results of the small groups. This would be the equivalent of a gallery walk in a TBL session.

• February 2024 - What are Learning Goals, Learning Objectives, and Learning Outcomes?

  Learning goals, learning objectives, and learning outcomes are terms that are frequently used interchangeably. Unfortunately, they really are not interchangeable. The purpose of this workshop is to clarify what they mean, how they should be mapped to each other and medical education program outcomes, and how they are derived when developing a course or a session within a course.

  For this workshop, attendees should prepare by reading select sections of papers regarding these topics. When they arrive, there will be individual quizzes on these topics (will not be turned in). This is identical to the iRAT component of a TBL. The second component of the session will be small groups taking the same quiz with the opportunity to discuss the answers within the team. This is the tRAT component of a TBL. This will be followed by a brief review of the correct answers. Lastly, the small groups will be given a mapping exercise to complete that uses the principles behind learning goals, learning objectives, and learning outcomes.

• January 2024 - Competency/Outcomes-Based Medical Education Workshop

  Competency-Based Medical Education (CBME), which is synonymous with outcomes-based medical education, is the predominant approach to medical education in the United States. In fact, outcomes-based education is mandated by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME), the accrediting body for MD schools.

  For this workshop, attendees should prepare by reading select sections of papers regarding CBME. At the workshop, there will be a short summary presentation on general principles of CBME, mastery learning, and curriculum design principles. The majority of the session will be an exercise where small groups of attendees will use backwards design to develop context-dependent competency objectives with expectations based on learning curves.