Med students in Vermont rejoice! The Washington Post reports:
When the University of Vermont’s medical school opens for the year in the summer of 2019, it will be missing something that all but one of its peer institutions have: lectures. The Larner College of Medicine is scheduled to become the first U.S. medical school to eliminate lectures from its curriculum two years from now, putting it at the leading edge of a trend that could change the way the next generation of physicians learn their profession.
Why did they do this?
“Retention after a lecture is maybe 10 percent,” said Charles G. Prober, senior associate dean for medical education at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “If that’s accurate, if it’s even in the ballpark of accurate, that’s a problem.”
So what does the new model look like?
Under the Larner model, students do their homework the night before class, rather than after it. They study the material in texts and online before a class, then take a short quiz to gauge how well they’ve learned it. After that, they break up into groups of six and attempt to solve a medical problem, then discuss their conclusions, led by a professor who acts as both a facilitator and an instructor, Jeffries said.
“You’re expected to learn the information prior to attending [a class],” he said. “You do your homework first. Then you come and work, usually in groups, to solve a problem based on that knowledge.”