Teaching, Learning, & Assessment

Quillen College of Medicine

Academic and Faculty Affairs

The TRAILS curriculum promotes learning environments that engage faculty and students in the active application of knowledge and the practice of skills central to patient care. The curriculum underscores students’ role in learning, equipping them with the skills to think critically and make evidence-based decisions.

What is Active Learning?

Active learning generally involves students directly participating in the learning process, rather than just passively listening to a lecture or reading a text. Typically, these strategies involve students working together during class, but may also involve individual work and/or reflection.

Team-based Learning

Team-based learning (TBL) is a structured form of small group learning that can be applied to large classes. TBL emphasizes student preparation out of class and application of knowledge in class. Students are organized into small teams that work together throughout the course.

  • Pre-class Prep

    1. Learn with pre-work on your own.

    • Readings 
    • Handouts
    • Videos
  • Readiness Assurance

    2. Individual Readiness Assurance Test (IRAT)

    • Take  a quiz on your own

    3. Group Readiness Assurance Test (GRAT) with immediate feedback.

    • Take the quiz again with your group

    4. Clarification session

    • Ask questions and clarify responses 
  • Application

    5. Application exercises - work through a problems or cases with these characteristics

    • Significant problem
    • Same problem
    • Specific choice
    • Simultaneous report

Inquiry Cases



Inquiry (IQ) cases use a student-centered, small group learning method adapted from problem-based learning (PBL). Students are joined with a faculty facilitator to research and discuss paper cases. Students develop their own learning objectives on the first day of the case and then discuss what they have researched and learned on the second day of the case.  

teaching

 

Unlike other forms of PBL, in IQ all students are responsible for researching all student-generated learning objectives. In this way, students take primary responsibility for their own learning and are prepared to discuss all objectives. 

 

Integrated Grand Rounds

During Integrated Grand Rounds (IGR), cases are co-presented to students by clinical and basic science faculty. Brief faculty didactic presentations are interspersed between live patient interviews and small group breakout sessions led by trained third- and fourth-year student mentors. IGR occurs up to two times per semester and is a unique opportunity for students across the curriculum to come together to learn. 

Assessment

The TRAILS curriculum embraces a philosophy of assessment for learning. Assessment activities contribute significantly to student learning by giving each student ongoing feedback about their performance. The model is based on continuous, progressive, low-stakes assessments leading up to a final assessment with somewhat higher stakes. Students have multiple opportunities to reinforce their learning through questions during class, end-of-week checkpoints, and researching objectives for IQ. All courses in the pre-clerkship phase are graded as Pass/Fail.