Pandemic Silver Linings? Unexpected teaching insights and innovations that can improve our post-lockdown classes.

Constraints can broaden perspective and provide motivation to re-think assumptions and reconsider established practices. With the transition from in-person to online education, higher education institutions encountered significant difficulties. Yet these same constraints have driven some dramatic positive innovations in teaching. Join us for a discussion of some of the exciting insights and strategies that promise more effective, more inclusive, and more equitable post-lockdown educational practices.

Learning Objectives

• Participants in this session will be able to incorporate one or more new valid and useful techniques in the learning environments they create which will help increase student engagement, motivation, and learning.

Presenter:

Jay Phelan, PhD
Life Sciences Core Curriculum
UCLA

Jay Phelan is on the faculty of the UCLA Life Sciences Core Program, specializing in evolutionary biology, human behavior, and genetics. He received a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard, and master's and bachelor's degrees from Yale and UCLA. He is the author of the textbook "What is Life? A Guide to Biology" and co-author of Mean Genes. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including UCLA's Distinguished Teaching Award.

Compassionate Off Ramps for Struggling Students

Every learner struggles sometime in the arduous and capricious process of medical education. Numerous barriers affect the careers and financial well-being of learners who withdraw or must be dismissed; with intention, institutions can mitigate some of these untoward effects. After reviewing the plight of struggling students, we will spend much of our time in breakout groups to discuss methods and systems that Stanford can adopt to help these vulnerable learners.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the range of educational outcomes for struggling students.
• Name methods and systems that institutions can establish to mitigate the burden of unfortunate educational outcomes.
• Discuss methods and systems that Stanford can adopt.

Presenter

Calvin Chou, MD, PhD
Professor of Clinical Medicine
Medicine
UCSF

Calvin Chou, MD, PhD is Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, and staff physician at the Veterans Affairs Health Care System in San Francisco. As Senior Faculty Advisor for External Education with the Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH), he is recognized internationally for leading workshops in relationship-centered communication, feedback, conflict, and remediation in health professions education. He is co-editor of the books Remediation in Medical Education: A Midcourse Correction, and Communication Rx: Transforming Healthcare Through Relationship-Centered Communication.

Structure Matters: 21 Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Make Classrooms Fair and Inclusive

Teaching diverse populations of students requires instructors to construct learning environments that are inclusive and equitable. Research in psychology and other disciplines suggests that how students personally experience learning environments strongly influences engagement, motivation, sense of belonging, and conceptual learning. In this interactive workshop, participants will share a common experience as the basis for discussing how students may experience classroom environments differently from one another. Participants will then have the opportunity to self-assess their current awareness 21 common equitable teaching strategies and identify those that could be immediately implemented in their classrooms, labs, and clinical environments.

Learning Objectives

• To describe the ways unstructured environments can lead to inequities and unfairness.
• To identify and circumvent the "deficit model" in real world scenarios.
• To compare and contrast research-based strategies for enhancing equity and fairness through purposeful structure in learning environments.

Presenter

Jeff Schinske
Department Chair & Professor of Biology,
Department of Biology
Foothill College

Professor Jeff Schinske is department chair and professor of biology at Foothill College where he conducts research on equity and inclusion in science classrooms. He leads two federal grant programs: the NIH Scientist Spotlights Initiative, which supports the development and dissemination of inclusive biology curricula, and the NSF CC Bio INSITES, which empowers community college biology faculty to conduct and publish education research. Jeff has authored numerous high-profile biology education research articles, is co-Editor-In-Chief of the journal CBE-Life Sciences Education, and serves as lead biology curriculum reviewer for C-ID, California’s statewide course articulation system. Jeff is a frequent featured speaker in the areas of discipline-based education research and STEM equity, and was the 2018 recipient of the national Outstanding Undergraduate Science Teaching Award from the Society for College Science Teachers.

Strategies for Enhancing Virtual Education: Optimizing Your Teaching Using Zoom

Teaching remotely on Zoom provides an opportunity to teach and build learner communities in a new way -- across time zones and health systems. To optimize learner success, educators must embrace and master the virtual education format tradeoffs. In this session, we will engage educators to optimize their Zoom interactions with learners, through hands on experience with: Maximizing their personal Zoom presence; Coaching learners on their Zoom presence; Making curricular modifications for virtual education for knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors; Enhancing curricular reach with remote speakers and learners; Creation of group micro-assignments; Using breakout sessions and multi-Zoom sessions; Using critical Zoom features: Public and private Chat, polling, annotating, screen sharing, reactions.

Learning Objectives:

• To maximize their personal engagement with learners, while building learner and educator communities.
• To utilize 5 specific Zoom functionalities to enhance learner’s engagement with content.

Presenter:

Malathi Srinivasan, MD
Clinical Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine—Primary Care and Population Health

Dr. Srinivasan is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, Associate Director at the Stanford Center for Asian Healthcare Research and Education (Stanford CARE), Fellow at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health (CIGH), board member at the Stanford Clinical Teaching Seminar Series, co-lead of the Instructional Peer Observation Program, and member of the Stanford Teaching and Mentoring Academy (TMA). She is co-Director of the One Health Teaching Scholars Faculty Development Program, an international program focusing on faculty development for health professions education around the world. She is a contributor to CBS-KPIX “Medical Mondays”. Previously, Dr. Srinivasan was a Master Clinical Educator and Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, and was the Kimitaka Kaga Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo at the International Research Center for Medical Education. Dr. Srinivasan brings her skills as an educator, physician, health services researcher, and entrepreneur to considering how scalable technologies can improve health care and education.

Assessment for Medical Learners: Reducing Bias and Promoting Equity

Assessment of medical students’ performance in the clinical environment reveals population group differences that favor learners from backgrounds not-underrepresented in medicine. The interpersonal and structural bias at play in evaluation of clinical performance affects students’ learning and career opportunities, and patients’ clinical care. In this talk, Drs. Hauer and Bullock will discuss causes of inequity in assessment strategies to promote equity, and areas for further research and change. This session will include didactic presentation and breakout groups to discuss local applications.
 

Learning Objectives

• To discuss causes and consequences of bias in assessment of medical learners.
• To propose strategies for equity in assessment in medical education.

Presenters:

Karen Hauer, MD, PhD
Associate Dean for Assessment
Department of Medicine, General Medicine, UCSF

Karen Hauer is Associate Dean for Competency Assessment and Professional Standards and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She designs and leads the program of assessment in the UCSF School of Medicine Bridges curriculum and directs the School’s medical student coaching program. She is an active researcher in medical education and a research mentor for fellows, residents and students, with a focus on competency-based medical education, learner assessment, coaching and remediation. In 2015, she completed a PhD in Medical Education through a joint program with UCSF and the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. She earned her undergraduate degree at Stanford University, and then completed medical school and internal medicine residency and chief residency at UCSF.

Justin Bullock
MD Resident, Internal Medicine, UCSF

Justin Bullock is a second-year resident in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Originally from Detroit, Michigan, he completed his undergraduate studies in Chemical-Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and medical school at UCSF. Justin brings a wide range of experience in medical education: he has led numerous small-group problem-based learning sessions for medical students, helped lead UCSF’s student peer teaching program and worked to redesign pre-clinical curriculum around team learning and communication skills. His research interests in medical education focus on clinical assessment, student perceptions of the clinical learning environment and equity in medical student assessment. 

Anti-racism, White Privilege, and Allyship in Medicine

While the fight against racism is centuries-old, the murder of George Floyd in March 2020 sparked a global uprising against anti-Black police brutality, bringing conversations about racism front and center in many contexts where these conversations have not previously taken place. For some, this is a new conversation, but it is a critical conversation for all of us, especially in the context of medicine and medical education. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 7 in 10 African Americans believe they are treated unfairly when seeking medical care. In this workshop, we seek to clarify what white privilege and anti-racism look like in our daily lives, as well as describe the role of intersectionality in understanding oppression. We will focus particularly on these concepts in the context of medicine and medical education. Participants will have a chance to think about how they can work for positive change within their own departments and programs.

Learning Objectives:

• Define white privilege, anti-racism, intersectionality, and allyship.
• Create an action plan for positive change to take back to home department. 

Presenters:

Bahij Austin
Assistant Dean for Curricular Affairs, Office of Medical Education, School of Medicine - Student Affairs

Lars Osterberg, MD, MPH
Director, Educators for CARE and Faculty Co-director of the Teaching and Mentoring Academy

Christine Schirmer, EdD
Administrative Director, Teaching and Mentoring Academy

Achievement Goal Orientation: Aligning your goals to best adapt to challenges and engage in deep, lifelong learning

The practice of medicine involves a lifelong educational journey and one with many unforeseen twists, turns, setbacks and challenges. In addition, much of what is learned in medical school and during residency will become obsolete as new information and new understandings arise and replace older information and incomplete understandings. This session is designed to help the attendee understand achievement goal orientation which directly impacts how a person construes and reacts to these challenges. This presentation will demonstrate a functional approach for dealing with setbacks and challenges which will foster lifelong learning.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the difference between a Learning goal and a Performance goal.
• Explain why a learning goal orientation results in a more functional response to negative feedback, a setback or a challenge.
• Articulate at least one strategy for increasing your learning orientation.

Keith Baker, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Anesthesia and Vice Chair for Education and Faculty Affairs, Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Medical School

This event is hosted by The Precision Education and Assessment Research Lab (PEARL) of the Department of Emergency Medicine in collaboration with The Departments of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine and The Teaching and Mentoring Academy

The Cognitive Science of Teaching and Learning – Improving Education for Healthcare providers

This session will review key studies on how people learn and what leads to better learning in adults. This evidence-based approach to improving our learning also frequently leads to opportunities for better teaching. Discussion of the material will enhance attendees’ understanding of how to use this evidence for better learning and, consequently, better patient care.

Learning Objectives

• Identify and use 2 strategies to improve retention of imformation by learners.
• Describe how working memory capacity (WMC) severely limits use of new information in novice learners. This informs our expectations of novice learners.
• Use constructivism as a strategy to enhance deeper-level learning

Keith Baker, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Anesthesia and Vice Chair for Education and Faculty Affairs, Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital Harvard Medical School

The Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine - Grand Rounds Event in collaboration with The Precision Education and Assessment Research Lab and The Teaching and Mentoring Academy.