A silver lining in medical student mistreatment? Sounds ridiculous, but that is exactly what happened at the Penn State College of Medicine.
In this session you will learn:

1. How a learner mistreatment problem fueled system-wide change.
2. How focusing on eliminating learner mistreatment wasn’t enough.
3. How shifting the focus to highlighting exceptional teaching engaged learners and leaders.
4. How analyzing a database of over 3,000 student narratives on exceptional teaching led to three key themes for medical educators to use as a guide to exceptional teaching.
5. The belief that today’s students don’t want to be challenged is a myth.
6. Strategies for faculty to engage learners in ways they find to be challenging, effective, and rewarding.

It can be difficult for faculty to create aligned learning outcomes, assessments, and instruction that promote learners' deep understanding and ability to transfer knowledge to real world contexts. The Understanding by Design (UbD) framework offers a structured, backward approach to curriculum design that begins by defining big ideas and measurable outcomes, then moves to the development of authentic assessments and active instructional approaches. This session provides practical tips to help educators apply UbD in their own courses, including strategies for writing outcomes, designing performance-based assessments, and fostering learner-centered experiences. Participants will gain actionable skills to enhance curriculum planning and improve student engagement and competency development.

This session will examine how peer feedback can be a powerful tool for upholding high academic and professional standards while actively promoting learner growth in pre-clerkship and early professional education. Instead of seeing rigor and learner support as opposing priorities, the session will reframe them as mutually supportive objectives that can be intentionally aligned through effective feedback practices. Based on evidence from health professions education, the session will demonstrate how structured, constructive peer feedback enhances accountability, professionalism, and self-awareness – competencies that are challenging to evaluate through traditional exams and faculty observation alone.

In this talk, I will discuss my research on faculty mindsets, including evidence that these mindsets matter for students' psychological and academic outcomes, ways in which faculty communicate their mindsets to students, and implications for teaching practice

Psychological safety is widely recognized as essential to effective learning in health professions education, yet much of the literature defines it by its absence—focusing on mistreatment rather than exploring learners’ own conceptions of what psychological safety is. In this talk, I present findings from a study exploring how medical students experience psychological safety within a peer mentorship learning context. Students described safety as “not feeling judged,” which allowed them to be more present, take learning risks, and build authentic relationships. I propose reframing psychological safety as educational safety—a relational construct that can help us build learning environments that foster trust, mentorship, vulnerability, and support.