Over the past several years, we have reduced the length of lectures delivered in our first year medical gross anatomy course. Our lectures, which had been 50 minutes or more in length, have been reduced to 20-30 minutes. These "mini-lectures" or lab introductions focus on general concepts, an orientation to the dissection procedure, highlighting key relationships, and common anatomically relevant clinical correlations. The purpose of decreasing lecture time was to make more laboratory time available, and to change the focus of the gross anatomy course from teacher-centered, passive learning to student-centered, active learning. Concurrent with reduction of lectures, we have developed a significant amount of didactic course material available via our course web pages. We also installed computers within the gross anatomy laboratories, to enable student access to web assets during dissection. The shortened lectures have not had a deleterious effect upon student examination performance. Indeed, for the past two years, we recorded the best course scores within the past ten years. Student opinions on the shortened lecture format have been somewhat mixed, but on the most part positive. The gross anatomy course rating for the past two years remains high. The faculty evaluation form was altered to correspond with the change in focus of teaching effort from lecture to laboratory instruction, and student evaluations of faculty who have shortened their lectures have been positive. Anatomy faculty members have continued to receive teaching awards, despite some fears of repercussions of limiting lecture time.

BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:

Participants will be able to see data that shows how reducing lecture time and enhancing alternate learning methods can result in improved student performance.

Thomas R. Gest
Division of Anatomical Sciences
Office of Medical Education
University of Michigan Medical School
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0608
Phone: 734-764-4389
Fax: 734-615-8191
Email: gest@umich.edu
Website: http://www.med.umich.edu/anatomy/

CO-AUTHORS:

S. Anilesh, P. Balcena, E. Batts, J. Bess, W. Burkel, W. Castelli, D. Cooper, G. Cortright, J. Curkendall, S. Devaney, G. Durka-Pelok, B. Egeland, N. Elkin, D. Fisher, S. Gonzalez, O. Hanshaw, D. Kay, S. Kim, A. Raoof, M. Roubidoux, N. Saunders, J. Smith, D. Somand, D. Spearman, T. Stein, C. Vemuri, J. Walter

University of Michigan Medical School