This innovative online education platform juxtaposes real-world scenarios such as exercise or clinical cases with science to empower learning. Image: HMX
This innovative online education platform juxtaposes real-world scenarios such as exercise or clinical cases with science to empower learning. Image: HMX
Harvard Medical School will reach even greater numbers of students globally this year through its newest external education offering, an innovative online learning platform called HMX Fundamentals.
Khon Kaen University (KKU) in the heart of northeast Thailand has renewed its participation in the program and expanded the number of enrolled students over the next year.
“We want to use this unique educational material to inspire pre-health career learners and build on their passion for biomedical science,” said David Roberts, HMS dean for external education.
HMX Fundamentals was created by the HMS Office of Online Learning. The platform takes advantage of the flexibility and unique opportunities of digital media to bring health science learning to life.
Course work is designed to engage and inform students, preparing them for the next step of their careers, program leaders said.
“The modules are created in a way that puts students at the center and makes them feel engaged in learning,” said Charnchai Panthongviriyakul, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at KKU. “Faculty members who participated as moderators in course discussion forums were able to see that guiding students in their self-directed learning process was as important as being a content provider.”
Built using the broad and deep scientific and educational resources of HMS, the HMX courses combine narrated videos, interactive modules and state-of-the art biomedical visualization to empower medical and other pre-health career students to learn fundamental concepts in the health sciences.
HMX students engage with the content by solving problems using the basic biomedical principles they’ve learned throughout the program, making direct links between science, clinical medicine and patient health.
Students can then discuss course material and their solutions to patients’ problems in discussion forums, with advanced students and faculty moderators facilitating the discussion.
Broadening perspectives
In addition to providing effective educational tools and helping students learn key concepts, leadership at KKU said that supporting access to the HMX courses has been a great opportunity for the Thai medical students and instructors to work together, and to broaden their perspective on best practices in medical education.
In 2015, the first cohorts of learners, including students at both HMS (in medical, dental and medical physics programs) and KKU Faculty of Medicine, piloted HMX Fundamentals courses in physiology and immunology.
The platform currently includes two completed programs (immunology and physiology) and two programs under development (genetics and biochemistry).
For the first cohort, approximately 150 KKU medical students had access to a pilot version of the course. Starting June 15 and continuing throughout the coming academic year, KKU will support seats for three separate groups of students to gain access to the completed immunology and physiology courses and to pilot the new genetics course.
While in 2015 only students from the KKU Faculty of Medicine participated, this year students from the Faculty of Dentistry were also offered the opportunity to participate.
The platform and programs that KKU will access take advantage of the latest advances in the science of learning, the dynamism of multimedia, and cutting edge biomedical visualization to enable experiential learning at a distance, said Roberts, also an associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
“We want to foster students’ understanding of fundamental principles and show how these concepts are used on a daily basis in taking care of patients, ” said Michael Parker, faculty director of online learning at HMS.
“The goal is to do that in a way that will be both engaging and relevant to learners’ careers,” he said.
In addition to the growth of the program at KKU, HMS is expanding access to HMX course content for HMS students this year. Material from both the physiology and immunology lessons will be incorporated as part of the flipped classroom approach used in the Homeostasis and Immunity in Defense and Disease courses taught by key HMX faculty Drs. Richard Schwartzstein, Andrew Lichtman and Shiv Pillai.
“It is exciting to see these fantastic new approaches to medical education being used successfully both here at HMS and by innovative schools around the world, such as KKU in Thailand,” noted Edward Hundert, HMS dean for medical education.
External education is also expanding access to the HMX platform through a series of licensing arrangements with other institutions within the United States and internationally to help students everywhere adapt to the changing world of biomedical education, research and care delivery, Roberts said.
View the HMX video trailer here.
