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Histology Education in an Integrated, Time‐restricted Medical Curriculum – Academic Outcomes and Students’ Study Adaptations
Author(s) -
Hortsch Michael,
Gribbin William,
Wilson Eric,
McTaggart Suzy
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2020.34.s1.04195
Subject(s) - histology , curriculum , virtual microscopy , medical education , medicine , psychology , pathology , pedagogy
In an ever‐changing medical curricular environment, time dedicated for anatomical education has become more and more curtailed. This happened at the University of Michigan Medical School when the period of preclinical medical education was reduced from two years to one year starting with the academic year 2016–17. Histology instruction remained integrated in organ system courses, but all faculty‐guided laboratory sessions were completely removed, reducing histology teaching to a lecture‐only format and requiring students to study virtual histological slides from a course website on their own time. In accordance with the shortened instructional time, the number of histology examination questions was reduced more than twofold. We investigated changes in students’ histology examination results, surveyed their motivation to learn histology, and assessed their use of histology educational material and opportunities before and after these curricular changes were implemented. Students’ motivation to learn histology and their evaluation of histology lectures slightly increased in the new curriculum. However, they devoted less study time to learning histology and used the course website and supplementary learning material less than students in the old curriculum. Students’ cumulative histology examination scores over the entire M1 year were significantly lower in the new curriculum and the number of students with overall scores under 75%, which is considered a failing performance, increased more than fifteenfold. Aside from the shorter instruction time, the decision to not provide histology performance subscores to students may also have contributed to this decrease in academic performance. In addition, we suspect that a decentralization of curricular organization, leaving decisions to individual organ system course directors about the integration and time dedicated for longitudinal histology instruction, may have played a role in decreasing consistent histology education in the new curriculum. This study received a non‐regulated status from the University of Michigan IRB (HUM00162947).