‘Vermont Medical School Says Goodbye To Lectures’

Audie Cornish, writing for NPR’s All Things Considered:

Have you had pushback to this move?

Certainly, we’ve gotten some pushback, but what I tell the average clinical faculty member is: “OK, if you like doing appendectomies using an old method because you like it, and you’re really good at it, but it’s really not the best method for the patient, would you do it?” Of course, the answer is always no. And then you turn around and say, “Well this method of teaching is actually not as good as other methods. Would you do that?” When confronted with a question like that, medical faculty typically tend to understand and agree.

I first heard about Active Learning at Minerva — my CCA students have been great beneficiaries.

It’s a lot more work to teach this way, but in my anecdotal experience, it’s substantially more effective, in large part beacuse students have a teacher and other students available when they get stuck doing something.