REQUIRED Vs ESSENTIAL Sessions

REQUIRED vs ESSENTIAL Sessions

The large majority of scheduled sessions in each SBM or Pharmacology course in Year 2 are neither classified as "required" nor "essential" as defined below. The faculty hope you will find value in attending these sessions, and we hope that you will each attend most of them. You will be responsible for the material presented in each session on each course's final exam. The faculty put a lot of work into making these sessions as valuable to you as possible, and from the faculty member's point of view, it's much more fun to give a lecture (or other session) to a room with energy and participation from many students. The faculty also understand that some students feel they get more out of standard lectures by watching them via Echo 360 recordings later, so they can go faster through some portions, and slower through other parts. That is OK as well, just remember that the Echo 360 system fails to record properly, in our experience, in about 5% of lectures, and that some of the class discussion during an Echo 360 recording doesn't record well, especially the audience participation piece.

Various other sessions in our Y2 courses are so important educationally that they are labeled as either "required" or "essential", and the information below will help you understand what those labels mean. For these important sessions or activities, the faculty expect that all students will attend all of these sessions, as part of their professional commitment to their own medical education. However, sometimes a student will miss one of these sessions, and the information below will help you understand what happens in that situation.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “REQUIRED” SESSIONS?

"Required Sessions", as defined by the Medical Education Committee (MEC) and its policies, include all small group sessions, laboratory sessions, and all sessions with patient participants. These are important sessions which require direct and active participation for you to obtain value from them, and they cannot be recorded with Echo 360, so they can't easily be made up.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY "ESSENTIAL" ACTIVITIES?

"Essential Activities", as defined by the Year 2 Course and Program Directors, are sessions where information presented and/or active participation is critical to developing your knowledge and skills in the specific subject area, and your active participation is necessary for you to pass this portion of the course. Additionally, they may also include assignments or other activities in areas that aren't well assessed by a final exam.

For most SBM courses, a student will need to obtain a passing score on the final exam (Competency 1: Medical Knowledge -- a summative assessment of the student's learning of new knowledge, and the student's ability to apply that knowledge to new situations), AND a passing score on the essential activities (Competencies 3, 4 & 5: Interpersonal and Communication Skills; Formation of a Mature, Responsible, and Ethical Professional Identity; Develop the Habit of Inquiry into and Improvement of One's Own Personal Practice -- attendance, active participation and team-building skills in other activities which are not well assessed on a written final exam, but which are important nevertheless).

In some cases, a session (like a small group conference) may be both a required session, as defined above, and an essential session that must be passed in order to pass the course.

CONFUSED? HERE IS A HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE OF HOW A COURSE MAY BE GRADED THIS YEAR.

In the SBM GI course, in order to pass in the coming year, a student might need to receive a passing score on the final exam (Competency 1, mentioned above). Additionally, they might also need to receive a passing score for active participation and engagement in a series of essential activities (Competencies 3, 4 & 5, also outlined above). This is very similar to passing Year 1 HAE, which required each student to pass a final exam and a lab practical exam as well.

Details about the way a passing score is determined on the final exam will be discussed during Year 2 Orientation.

Considering our hypothetical example, in addition to passing the final exam, the student will also need to receive a passing score for the essential activities. In this example, the essential sessions and/or assignments might include eight required and essential small group sessions, a visit to the endoscopy suite and a written description about a patient's experience of the endoscopy process.

For each GI conference, students can receive a score of 0 (did not attend), 1 (attended but was not actively participating in the discussion), or 2 (attended with active and helpful participation and engagement in the group discussion). There might also be a score of 2 points for attending the 2-hour experience in the endoscopy suite, and an additional 2 points awarded from writing the short paper. Thus, for this portion of the SBM/GI course, a student could hypothetically earn a score from 0 up to a maximum score of 20 points.

The SBM/GI course director may decide that a passing score for Competencies 3, 4, & 5 for the course would be a score of 17 out of 20 possible points. In this example, it is optimal for a student to attend and participate in all essential sessions; however, a student could still pass the course if he or she missed one small group conference; but that student would fail the course if he or she missed two of the essential small group conferences, or missed one conference and the endoscopy experience.