Developing student-centered learning experiences can be challenging even for experienced curriculum designers. Even though there are many benefits to shifting medical education away from traditional, lecture-based formats, faculty often struggle to develop engaging, problem-oriented instruction for students. For the past twenty years, we have applied an outcomes-driven, backward design framework in various contexts to develop a wide range of active learning experiences for students of all ages. These approaches have been evaluated through pilot studies and large scale randomized field test involving comparison groups. This session introduces a three step framework for curriculum development, and provides participants with approaches and tools to create active learning experiences for courses, modules or sessions. The framework asks curriculum designers to teach and assess for understanding, by first identifying desired learning goals that reflect transferable concepts for students, followed by using those concepts to develop effective student assessments. Along with a backwards design approach, we apply a learning cycle model to ensure that students have opportunities to explore, evaluate and extend their knowledge in an authentic context. This process results in learning experiences that are aligned with desired student outcomes, and assess students' understanding and demonstration of intended knowledge and skills

 

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