This “flipped classroom” mode of instruction is becoming the norm, not the exception for med students.
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I really hate these types of articles. They take the perceived experience of two people from one university (or in this case, medical school), and make vast, wide-reaching claims about processes and trends across an entire discipline. Worse, they are opinion pieces which imply that they are based on actual reality rather than perceived reality based on very narrow and very limited experience.
What “data” do we have?
The perception of a single medical student and a single professor who does not even provide actual numbers for his own class.
I’m sorry, but this is nothing but a medical school student pushing what is likely their hobby-horse, namely “flipped classroom” as a “solution” for a “problem”.
Not once in the entire article does the author prove that the problem exists, and not once does he demonstrate that his proposed solution actually is a solution.
I have said many times that an MD is not a research degree, and that MDs are poorly trained, or not trained at all, in research methodology. This is a classic example.
PS. Not criticizing you, @WayOutWestMom, I’m criticizing the author and the good people at NPR whose entire critical abilities seem to have failed.
Daughter and SIL graduated from Med School in 2017. Daughter went to class, always, SIL went rarely. They both graduated with honors. Different learning styles.
Agree with this 100%. Long before Covid, and even before the internet was everywhere, med schools (or at least my med school) made it easy for students to choose their preferred method of learning, which didn’t have to be class attendance. For me, the student-run note-taking service meant I could read (rather than listen), and thus store tons of information in my weird, visually oriented memory filing system. I don’t mean visually as in pictures, photos, charts, or schematics, but just this spatial memory of where on a page the text blob with the relevant information was (and also where I was sitting when reading it, which is useless). When I recall something that I did happen to learn in class, I have a memory of where I was sitting in the auditorium for that lecture.
Flipped classroom is a trendy buzzword. But liking a textbook or notes better than a snoozefest sorry I mean lecture - that’s been around forever. And I have family who think reading is the snoozefest and auditory is the way to go…to each his own.
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I would have you know that I almost never fell asleep when I lectured!
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Over 20 years ago, my med school was among the first to offer online lectures (anyone remember RealPlayer?). I can’t remember if they were livestreamed but they were certainly available immediately after since we had to be able to keep up.
In addition, for probably decades before any online courses, med schools had note taking co-ops in which one student was pre assigned for each lecture/topic to produce high quality notes - not what you scribbled in lecture, but an outline/bulleted Word document with illustrations and references - that could take hours.
I was a “nontraditional” med student coming from a brief career in bioengineering. With all that available, in hindsight I felt like I could have kept working part time for the first 2 years instead of taking loans!
I did end up getting a grad assistantship research position based on my previous job, which had multiple benefits - CV building for residency, hourly pay, and a tuition credit. I had plenty of time to do this…I did still attend lectures most of the time though.
The article does beg the question, though, about whether the preclinical med school courses could be made more “open source.” It could be more accessible and lower cost and could be done remotely. However, it makes it more difficult to clinically correlate the learning if not done concurrently with anatomy lab, histology lab etc.
In addition, most schools have long been trying to live toward a more clinically integrated curriculum from year 1 rather than sitting in lectures for 90% of Year 1-2 (I doubt any school does this anymore…)