feedback with several faculty members reporting that they had either already
incorporated interactive classrooms in their teaching approaches before it was a BUSM focus area, or that they enjoyed adding interactivity, while others noted that not all content lends itself to an interactive style and did not like having it be a mandate. Some who enjoy teaching with interaction expressed understanding for their colleagues who taught material that didn’t lend itself to easy interaction and even they at times struggled with how to include it. This backs up a theme that emerged in Chapter Four’s finding about some materials being more transmissive in nature.
Sometimes you have to work really hard to figure out, where does it even make sense to do interactive activities. Sometimes the interactive activities
can feel forced, kind of wasting time – and I’m speaking as somebody who does like to teach that way.
Even instructors who teach with interactivity have an understanding why some of their colleagues push back regarding the requirement for interactivity in some courses. Does this need to be readdressed? Is there a one-size fits all approach when it comes to requiring certain pedagogical approaches be used? Or is it best for students to have similar activities throughout courses for consistency?
To that point, respondents described main drivers for requiring each PrISM module to have more interactivity were primarily to align with LCME standards to
reduce lecture hours and because leadership encourages it. BUSM aims to provide a more consistent student experience across the modules/courses. There is a desire for a certain level of uniformity so students can know what to expect in subsequent modules or courses and to ensure they are not receiving content in different ways that may be confusing or time-consuming. BUSM is trying to ensure there is more consistency and standard expectations students can rely on across the curriculum, yet some instructors feel it stunts their individuality and creativity. Should there be a balance between some level of uniformity for students’ ease of learning, and comfort with knowing what
format/activities to expect, while allowing for additional autonomy of faculty to decide in some cases what activities or approaches should be applied?
It would be interesting to further explore faculty (and even student) perspectives here because as with the technology changes, opinions differ greatly. At least a few
faculty members mentioned than the school is trying very hard to add this interactivity in while students do not like it at all. One respondent summed up themes heard from others:
I don’t know how this conflict will get resolved, but students don’t want it [interactive classes]. We view it a little naively saying, “Oh, they’ll love it. They’ll want to be active and do all of these things.” But that is the last thing they want to do. They want to know, “what do we have to know, and let me go home and learn it.” And that’s it. No small groups, no PBL [problem-based learning], none of that stuff. They hate it. I have the comments to prove it. They don’t like it and they tolerate TurningPoint [audience response system] as long as it’s used sparingly.
That said, other faculty spoke about how much students enjoy and engage in the interactive sessions, as noted in at least one Chapter Four quote in this area. Perhaps opinions differ so much because it is not always just a matter of conducting the
interactive exercises or not, but likely depends on who is conducting the exercises and how those instructors feel about doing them, which may impact how they are done. It seems that those who enjoy adding in the interactivity and see its value present it in a way that the students seem to really engage with and enjoy and there are not complaints in course evaluations. However faculty that do not believe in having to force interactivity have not bought in and they receive poor evaluations from students on when they include such activities. These are the same students taking all of these modules with various instructors, so it would be interesting to do a wider study on this topic to see if it is a matter of the content, which types of interactive exercises are chosen, the manner the
exercises are introduced and conducted, or does it point to a lack of commitment from certain instructors to fully adopt this pedagogy? Or, is there simply a gap in instructor training? Perhaps there should be frequent faculty development in this area to master the art of effectively facilitation of interactive sessions that engage students to maximize value.
Another consideration to discuss is how much of a difference should it make if students do not like a method of interactive instruction when the school, the literature, and the LCME deem it as beneficial and show evidence for its efficacy? There are many facets to interactivity beyond its benefit for higher-level learning, knowledge transfer, application, and retention. When students become physicians, they will need to interact in a variety of ways: with interdisciplinary teams of other professions in the medical field, with patients, with patient families, with their peers, and potentially their own residents and medical students someday. Isn’t it crucial to give students frequent opportunities to practice these interactions and hone their skills for being able to work in teams?
As noted in section 4.2.2, survey responses indicate many faculty are interested in the initiatives to create and/or provide flipped classroom content for self-directed and asynchronous learning, as well as student-centered active learning environments. While the survey found that interest is the main driver for faculty participation in this area, it did not pose questions asking for the reason behind the interest or behind any of the
pedagogy initiatives.
Is it because faculty are looking to embrace the trend to move away from traditional lecture content, where the instructors are telling the content to students, to
formats for students to learn through either self-study or interactive classroom exercises? Do faculty enjoy adding interaction to lectures, even if just a few audience response questions to switch from talking at students to interacting with them in an effort to explore how students feel about a topic or test their understanding? Is it because of the compression of lecture time caused by the integration that there is not enough time to get it all in and other methods are needed to deliver content? Instructors are now removing the content from their classes that students can acquire on their own to make better use of in-class time for higher order learning activities.
5.4.3 Complexity, Challenges & Lessons Learned: Content Integration Changes