 |
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
 COURSE DEVELOPMENT GUIDELINES: DESIGNING AN ADVANCED ELECTIVE Describe the general goal of the course briefly. What should a student know and/or be able to do at the end of this elective? Consider where learners will begin [see HMS Curriculum Maps]. Students selecting an advanced elective will have completed all basic science courses and all clerkships. Develop a list of learning objectives that are more specific than the general goal. A learning objective contains information about who will do how much of what by when. These learning objectives tell students what will be expected of them during the course and what they will be graded on at the end of the course. Levels of Learning: A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching and Assessment Lower order skills: Remember: retrieve pertinent facts from long-term memory (recognize, recall) Understand: construct new meaning by mixing new material with existing ideas (interpret, exemplify, classify, summarize, infer, compare, explain) Apply: use procedures to solve problems or complete tasks (execute, implement) Analyze: subdivide content into meaningful parts and relate the parts (differentiating, organizing, attributing) Evaluate: come to a conclusion about something based on standards/criteria (checking, critiquing, judging) Higher order skills Create: reorganize elements into a new pattern, structure or purpose (generate, plan, produce) Describe the scope and sequence of the course content. To reach the goal, what tools, information or skills must the student have? What comes first? How much time does the student need to master each set of information or each skill? Describe the activities the student will engage in, where these will occur and who the faculty will be. This section should include a description of the teaching formats (lectures, seminars, ambulatory or hospital-based clinical rounds, etc.), the amount of time students will spend in each format, and the learning activities (independent reading, e.g.). Describe how the activities will not only help students learn the core elective content (e.g., care of the homeless) but also integrate basic science principles (for a review of the basic science content, which includes pathophysiology, clinical epidemiology, health care systems, ethics and social medicine, see HMS Curriculum Maps) and evidence-based medicine into this content. Year IV students should not only apply knowledge and skills they learned in the Fundamentals of Medicine or HST preclinical courses, but should also think critically and integratively at this stage of their education. Describe how the course will meet the needs of students with different interests, career goals and prior experiences. To what extent is the course structure flexible? The responses to each of the questions above will constitute most of a course syllabus, which students should receive on the first day of the elective. Decisions about whether to add readings, guidelines for assignments, etc. may depend upon the course goals. For instance, if student initiative and creativity are key goals, assigned readings may inhibit exploration. On the other hand, if time is of the essence, students may progress more quickly if readings are made available immediately. As stated above, assessment of student performance – and the student’s grade – should be linked explicitly to the learning objectives. Further resources regarding feedback and assessment [evaluation of students and of the clerkship itself] are available in the attached links. OTHER RESOURCES: Giving Feedback [http://hms.harvard.edu/ec_vqp.asp?name_GUID={E9B70003-0A3C-43E7-B536-5DB4EE7E8EE6}] Registering for a MyCourses Account [PDF attached] Completing Student Evaluations on MyCourses [PDF attached] Sample Clerkship Evaluation Form [PDF attached] Accessing Faculty Evaluations of Student Performance on MyCourses [PDF attached] Medical College of Wisconsin: Guidelines for Developing Clinical Electives and Subinternships http://www.mcw.edu/FileLibrary/User/sgalewsk/GUIDELInewrevised_4th_year_selective_coursesfinal_updated_1008.doc http://www.mcw.edu/FileLibrary/User/sgalewsk/ExternalWebPages/Proposeanewcourse/GUIDELInewrevised_3rd_year_elective_courses.doc http://www.mcw.edu/FileLibrary/User/sgalewsk/ExternalWebPages/Proposeanewcourse/Surgical_SubI_goalslatestLCME.doc http://www.mcw.edu/FileLibrary/Groups/InfoScopeEducationalServices/Proposeanewcourse/SUBI_Goals_and_Key_Feature_smedically_oriented.pdf Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University: Course Design Tips http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58474/CourseDesign.html |
