Applying the Hedgehog Concept to Transform Undergraduate Medical Education

Strategies to support self-regulated learning in integrated, student-centered curricula

PURPOSE

With undergraduate medical education shifting to an integrated, student-centered approach, self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are critical for student success. Educational research holds that learning strategy effectiveness is context dependent. Our study aims to explore what strategies medical students use to support SRL when engaged in the specific context of an integrated, student-centered curriculum.

APPROACH

This study took place in two medical schools with integrated, student-centered curricula. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with first-year medical students from both schools, asking them to reflect on the learning strategies they used throughout their first year of medical school. Interview data was analyzed first deductively using the SRL framework and then inductively to understand the specific strategies being used.

FINDINGS

Students engaged in strategies to support SRL in ways that were unique to the integrated, student-centered context. We found that medical students developed strategies to plan for integration and building connections across material during all three phases of self-regulated learning.

INSIGHTS

By identifying specific tasks and behaviors students utilized during their first year of medical school, this study provides a roadmap that students and educators can use to help students become self-regulated learners.

Using the "Hallmarks of Cancer" as a framework for medical students and clinicians to understand oncogenesis

Two landmark reviews in 2000 and 2011, describing the "Hallmarks of Cancer", provided a new and valuable framework for understanding the process of oncogenesis as a progressive accumulation of characteristics, each characteristic essential for a tumor to become a clinically relevant, metastatic neoplasia. The process of oncogenesis is conceptually important for physicians, both for clinical reasons, and for their engagement in oncological research. However, these reviews are written for specialists in the field, which presents barriers for novice learners. Therefore, to allow students, and also clinicians external to the oncological field, to access this valuable framework for understanding oncogenesis, we have created a condensed summary of the original reviews. Our institutions use a "flipped" approach to the large-group components of our preclinical education. We have successfully used our Hallmarks of Cancer summary as the prework for sessions on oncogenesis for five years at one institution, and nine years at the other, typically at the end of cancer blocks within integrated, multidisciplinary courses. We report here survey results indicating learners strongly appreciate the summary as both preparation material for participation in relevant flipped classroom sessions, and as a general review of oncogenesis. This condensed summary of the original Hallmarks of Cancer reviews makes many of the key concepts of oncogenesis available to medical students in their preclinical years, as well as to physicians outside the field of oncology.