Curriculum as a Whole Review Guidelines

The Curriculum Committee will call for a retreat once every four years to review the curriculum as a whole (Year 1, Year 2, Core rotations and clinical elective year). The retreat is designed to remove faculty from their work environment as well as to unite faculty from different geographical locations to create focused work time that will stimulate creativity and promote a free flow of ideas. A retreat has been described as a right venue to ‘harness the collective creativity of a group, foster change, change perceptions attitudes, and behaviors, to unite and create a collective vision’. The retreat will consist of preparatory activities and a three-day overnight event with an action-oriented agenda.

The attendees will be chosen by the Chair of Curriculum Committee and will represent all components of the curriculum as well as all having significant didactic and/or clinical teaching experience within the program. The retreat will be led by the Chair of the Curriculum Committee.

The goal of the review of the curriculum as a whole is to gather data and complete review template: aggregate results of previous four years of formal reviews of courses/clerkships and phases, program outcomes, educational program objectives and mapping to learning objectives, program objective outcomes.

It is important to emphasize that the review process is not intended to be threatening but rather to be helpful and constructive. Confidentiality must also be maintained throughout the process. All deliberations and reports must be kept confidential.  The review would accompany only Curriculum related issues, objectives, teaching methods and evaluation. Faculty Evaluation and administration matters of the department are not included.

CURRICULUM AS A WHOLE REVIEW PROCESS

The review process will result in a thorough evaluation of all the components of the curriculum including the preclinical studies and core clerkships. The following components will be on the agenda:

1. Review of content covered in Year 1 and Year 2
2. Review of content covered during the core rotations
3. Review of content covered during Year 4 (Clinical electives)
4. Review of the contact hours in the curriculum
5. Review of the pedagogies in the curriculum
6. Review of the assessment tools in the curriculum
7. Review of the competencies
8. Review of the four-year SOM objectives

1. All course/clerkship review documents and improvement plans must be made available to the attendees.

2. All phase review documents must be made available to the attendees.

3. The attendees will create a list of recommendations by the end of the retreat that will be presented to the Curriculum Committee.

4. If accepted the Chair of the Curriculum Committee will finalize a formal action plan that will be forwarded to the dean for approval.

5. The action plan is then implemented.

See next page for Review Schematic