eScholarship@UMMS

The documents in this collection have been created to provide course directors, lecturing faculty and small group facilitators at the University of Massachusetts Medical School with clear, vibrant, concrete student perspectives on effective practices for conducting courses, lectures, and small groups. They were developed on March 24, 2010 in a student-run feedback forum comprised of 21 MS2 and MS3 students, including 4 LInC (Learner-Centered Integrated Curriculum) student trustees, with the support of the Office of Undergraduate Medical Education. The call was sent to the entire second year class, and every effort was made to assure that selected students represented a wide range of learning styles and preferences. The discussion was directed toward the elements of our learning experience in the old UMMS curriculum that would be preserved – or even emphasized – in the LInC.

In this collection you will find three separate documents with three separate audiences: one for course directors, one for lectures, and one for small group facilitators. The advice within should be interpreted as a series of adaptable suggestions to inspire excellence in teaching; it does not pretend to be prescriptive. Each document is itself intended as a freestanding guide, providing concise, well-explained distillations taken from among the finest teaching and course architecture at UMass: what is done, and why it works. Rather than feedback on teaching that has already come and gone, this is our invitation to the novel process of “feed forward.”