Minutes from the Curriculum Committee Meeting
3/8/11
Topic
Attending:
Minutes
Information Items
Consent Agenda
Procedures &
Systems of Care
Discussion
Bacon, Bynum, Chuang, Cross, Dent, Farrell, Gilliland, Hobbs,
Marks, Newton, Rao, Serra, Slatt, Stone, Viera, Wood, Video:
Darrow, White
 Reviewed again by all.
 Felix has agreed to be the Course Director for
Neurology, Koonce for CAC with discussions ongoing
for Capstone and Neuroscience.
 Teaching Space – we developed a proposal for room
maintenance and scheduling with standard
equipment, protocols for scheduling including
reservation deadline, and some additional rooms for
the Dean’s Office scheduling. This is under review
now.
 The Finishline questionnaire was finished by the
seniors last week and we have data on the amount of
procedures done during the medical school
curriculum. They will be reviewed at the retreat in 10
days.
 There are problems with timeliness of grades in three
clerkships and perhaps some problems of
comparability across clerkships. I will be talking with
the Clerkship Directors.
 Wake fall out – There’s been substantial friction
between Wake and UNC in the press. From an
educational point of view, we hope that we will create
a safe haven for teaching both medical students and
residents. More to follow.
 CC3/4 and Clinical Skills Task Force minutes were
accepted.
 Testing Policy was taken off of the agenda and
discussed. The rationale for the testing policy was
concern around security and distribution for equity
(some students were coming in up to an hour late for
exams). While students have had informal input, it
was decided that the Whitehead would need to
review and that CC1/CC2 would need to formally
review.
 Regarding educational strategies, no additional
concerns: consensus that this was a reasonable
approach to teaching procedures.
 Regarding categories B and C, the only addition was
urinalysis which can be done in the first couple of
years. Of note, almost all third and fourth year
Action Items
Karen please check.
No changes.
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Review by Whitehead
and CC1/CC2. Bring
back to SOM
Curriculum Committee
if substantive changes.

OME will finalize and
send to all CC’s.
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Educational
Philosophy &
Strategies
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students no longer get experience looking at urine
except for the occasional Family Medicine or
outpatient medicine practice but even this is variable
according to the practice.
Category D is a worthy list which combines both major
procedures and important systems of care. Students
should learn almost all but how and where to teach
needs further discussion.
Consensus to reframe category D around specifics that
we want students to do.
o Be able to describe particular procedures
o Describe indications, costs, side effects,
alternatives and interpretation/use in clinical
practice
Does not include cognitive skills or procedures.
Capstone course may need more time if we want end
of medical school assessment on these things. One
week is not enough.
Philosophy – This document incorporates comments
from discussions as a series of points; it will need to be
refashioned in prose.
o It is meant to be aspirational for us.
o Its major purpose is not to separate us out
from other medical schools but, in the end, it
ends up feeling uniquely UNC with the
emphasis on service to the state, diversity and
the like.
o Other comments on content:
 We should include some mention of
important differentiation for students.
We want not just diversity coming in
but to provide different paths for
students.
 More emphasis on service given that
large push.
 More emphasis on diversity.
 We should include more emphasis on
primary care.
1-2 Year Data – Kurt Gilliland presented the data (see
handout) so far which breaks down lectures vs. small
groups. Commentary included:
o Probably a significant reduction in the
percentage of lectures over several years.
Alan Cross and others estimated that we had
been 80% lecture or so a number of years ago
and that this represents real change.
Although as Kurt mentioned, there are
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Consensus that it
captured core (with
additions). We will
revise and get input
from Curriculum
Committee and other
groups.

In advance of retreat,
need to know:
o Where UNC
stands in total
face time year
by year vs.
other schools.
o Where UNC
stands on
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significant issues of measurement.
o A key issue is how much active learning there
is and there is variability across courses and
across small group presenters.
o There’s a trade off between standard good
lectures and variability in small groups. Small
groups are not always the best. Nevertheless,
it’s important to set standards around active
learning/what we want to happen and TBL
offers potential
o Some courses have done a good job of
developing their small group teachers.
o The total amount of actual required face time
has increased over the years in some ways
(e.g., GUTS) that we’ve required more
material in advance.
o Very rarely do we have students learn things
during class, by which I mean active learning
rather than being given the material.
o Academy of Educators has been offering
pushing faculty development but it’s been at
the level of Course Directors and other more
senior people. We need to get involvement of
the people teaching the small groups if we’re
going to have them do it. TBL offers the
opportunity to have small groups without a
personal faculty in each session, and with
encouragement of students learning on their
own.
o Could we require modules in advance of
classes? Again, this is a TBL concept but
would allow there to be preparation.
o Perhaps a reasonable current goal might be
50% lectures and 50% active small group
(Shaheen)
What data do we need to collect for further
consideration of educational strategies?
o Normative data where UNC fits in compared
to other schools
o Total face time data – UNC vs. other schools
o How active our small groups are general
comments
What do we want for year 3/year 4?
o A key issue is availability of faculty teaching
the small groups.
o To what extent does the shelf exam drive
other students’ behavior.
o Finalize who will have some data on
o
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lecture vs.
small group
vs. other
schools.
An assessment
of active
learning year
by year.
There’s
variability
across small
groups –
different
techniques for
getting active
learning.
In advance of the
retreat, need to
contrast the core
clerkships/available
faculty, size of the
small groups.
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expectations for small groups.
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Specific Policy Issues
Mid-Course Review
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Graduate or Residency Director survey – Contrast of
simple vs. more detailed discussion:
o The more detailed form (Creighton) was
worrisome in terms of response rate. While
items were attractive, the practicality of it
seemed limited if we wanted to get large
response rates.
o Is it valuable to get assessment of Dean’s
letter? Will the Residency Directors actually
be able to comment on the Dean’s letter
without actually looking? Should we send
them the Dean’s letter? The consensus was
that it would be good to get some feedback
on.
o The Residency Director may or may not know
the students and may not be able to comment
on the specific clinical attributes - although
they will know who the under performers are.
o We should consider a very different survey for
Residency Directors given their level of
knowledge. We also should allow them to
delegate to anybody else they would like.
o Is survey fatigue an issue? Probably not given
that these will be from different perspectives
(Residency Directors and the student six
months out).
o It’s important to have space for comments –
this is going to give us the real feedback that is
valuable.
o How would this work later on? I would
envision a subcommittee of the Curriculum
Committee to be assigned to review these and
report back to the Curriculum Committee
about implications for our educational
programs.
Kurt described his process – he interviewed a series of
Course Directors and had discussions in CC1 and CC2.
Then proposal was distributed on Monday and
discussed further with the effort towards some sort of
automatic push interactions with all medical students,
sign off by Course Directors, with attention to trying to
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Require need of
preparation and level
of active learning
How does assessment
work in each of the
clerkships?
Consensus to go for a
simpler form. Put in
one page with a few
more details.
OME will revise the
form, get input and
pilot this in
March/April.
Gilliland to take to
CC1, CC2 for input
after revision.
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automate it so that it would reduce the work of
Course Directors.
Key comments included:

Tests of medical knowledge dominate in our school.
Other activities often don’t measure and take away
from performance on tests.
Curriculum Committee Meetings (monthly) in 238 MacNider:
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4/11 – 5-6:30pm
5/2 – 5-6:30pm
6/6 – 5:30-7pm
7/11 – 5-6:30pm
Mini Retreat – March 18th – 1:15-5pm – 238 MacNider.
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