Health Care and Housing Are Human Rights
Health Care and Housing Are Human Rights
  
University of New Mexico School of Medicine
Curriculum Development: General Principles & Resources
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Heather Rippetoe
PROCESS OF DEVELOPING A CURRICULUM
  1. Create a core design team. Suggestions for creating optimally effective design teams include:
    • Make it transdisciplinary, including experts in both relevant content (health sciences) and process (education). Suggestions include one or more physicians, nurses, social workers, educators, students, patients. Optimal maximum size for a core working group is five to eight members.
    • Instead of assigning members, have them self-select.
    • Members should be passionate about what they do and about the curriculum you are developing.
  2. Be realistic about and commit to the time that will be involved. Developing a four-year developmental curriculum and integrating it into an existing—most likely already overloaded—medical education curriculum is a long-term project of at least three years.
  3. Set a regular time to meet. Blocks of at least an hour-and-a-half at a time work best.
  4. Consider having a process expert facilitate meetings.
  5. Identify a team member who can take notes, input the curriculum as it is developed, update it and distribute revised versions to the team.
  6. Seek funding opportunities, and apply for internal and external grants to fund the development of your curriculum, especially to buy release time for faculty participation.
  7. Select a particular set of guidelines for developing curriculum. Many are available. UNM SOM uses and highly recommends L. D. Fink’s guidelines as described in Creating Significant Learning Experiences (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003) and in abbreviated format “Self-Directed Guide to Designing Courses for Significant Learning.” The guidelines are intended for developing a single course, but almost all of the steps involved apply equally well to developing a curriculum.
  8. Commit to honoring the process. There can be a strong temptation to skip the conceptual planning and jump right to who is going to do what, when. To have a solid foundation on which to build, it is essential to complete the up-front conceptual planning.
  9. Base your curriculum on sound educational principles (see Curriculum Design & Teaching Principles & Strategies).
    • One of the biggest challenges will be to create an integrated versus a fragmented experience over the four years—one in which students will recognize the connection among the various elements that span the four years and perceive it as a cohesive program. How early will they get their first experience related to your curriculum (for example, can you do something during orientation)? How will you introduce the curriculum to them to create a positive first experience? Can you give them a road map of your curricular elements? Can you identify faculty mentors to meet with them periodically over the years? Can you design a culminating activity—such as a portfolio—that ties the curriculum together and that the student submits in a required rotation during the fourth year?
    • Focus on active learning and authentic experiences such as service learning.
    • Create opportunities for students to learn in transdisciplinary teams through interprofessional education. Service learning sites, home visits, case-based discussions, and public health problems are good opportunities to involve students across such professions as doctors, nurses, social workers, pharmacists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, lawyers and others.
  10. Research what is being done at other institutions and how it might apply to what you are planning for your institution.
  11. Look for opportunities to develop your own knowledge and skills related to the development process and content of your curriculum. For example, a member of the UNM SOM Curriculum Design Team attended an innovative faculty development program for primary care physicians at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Addressing the Health Needs of the Underserved
  12. Develop a good understanding of the curriculum and curriculum leaders of your institution:
    • To identify where you might be able to integrate elements of the curriculum you are developing;
    • To investigate what is already being done in the curriculum at your institution that relates to your curriculum; and
    • To map it out so that it can become an integrated part of your overall curriculum.
  13. As you are developing your curriculum, begin networking with others in your institution and in the community who share your passion, are already doing related activities, have sites where your learners might learn through service, will be instrumental in approving and/or integrating your curriculum, and so forth. Seek feedback on your curriculum as you develop it.
    • Keep administration informed. Convey your passion and enlist their feedback and support.
    • Get to know members of the committee in your institution that oversees and approves projects such as yours, along with the process for getting curricular innovations approved. Begin developing allies.
    • Show others involved in similar activities how you can help them and how creating an alliance with you can move both forward.
  14. Involve students who have a passion for serving the underserved. Enlist their help in promoting the need for the curriculum. Do you have a student interest group related to Poverty and Health? If so, align with them. If not, consider sponsoring the development of a group. The student voice can be very powerful in getting buy-in and approval for curricular change.
  15. As you identify relevant educational resources, keep a list of them; for examples, see UNM SOM's Resources for Teaching Poverty & Health.
  16. As you develop specific teaching/learning activities, look for opportunities to integrate them into the curriculum as “pilots.” It is not necessary to wait to integrate the entire curriculum at once. If the pilot is successful, you can make any necessary adjustments based on feedback and work on getting it institutionalized as part of the curriculum. This model of simultaneous development and implementation can be an effective way of testing, refining and institutionalizing your curriculum incrementally. It may also be easier to “sell” innovations as “experiments” or “pilots.”
  17. Develop a plan for how you will evaluate your curriculum. What will success look like? How will you measure it? What tools are available or will need to be developed? When and how will you collect data? How will you analyze it?
  18. Consider the possibilities for scholarship. Can you translate your work into a professional meeting presentation or poster? Can you prepare and submit a manuscript for journal publication?
Vega and King
Dr. Matias Vega & medical student Andrea King

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT:
GENERAL PRINCIPLES & RESOURCES CONTACT US
TED
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Barbara Wismer
Network's Poverty & Health Advisory Committee member, Dr. Barbara Wismer
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© 2008 Teacher & Educational Development, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico
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