CHESTAboutCurriculum and Learning Categories

Curriculum and Learning Categories

Our education mission is to provide formative interventions and resources based on current standards of care, promote adult learning principles, utilize a structured curriculum, and meet or exceed current guidelines of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME). Our educational curriculum is the foundation and covers specific clinical and other practice-related aspects of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine. We use this curriculum to develop, plan, and tag our content to ensure we’re your scope of practice and making it easy to access information in which you are most interested.

In addition to our curriculum, we also classify our education activities into six category learning formats or instructional strategies. Activities are classified using one or more of the categories to help you identify how the education will be delivered and assessed within the learning environment. The six learning categories are reflected on our CME certificates. See below to learn more about our current education offerings and how they are designed using our curriculum and learning categories.

Educational Curriculum

Learning Categories

Learning Category I: Lecture-Based

This category uses the traditional teaching methodology of a lecture. Lectures encompass a presentation on a disease state or health-care system subject, given in order to teach about that subject. Lectures convey critical information regarding the history, background, theories, and statistical data from clinical trials and/or other forms of medical research. Although the best means to deliver information to a large number of participants, the instructors need to be cognizant that the attention span of the average adult during a lecture is 8 to 10 minutes. Since most lectures are at least 50 minutes, and some up to 2 hours, there can be a serious mismatch between adult learners’ ability to lecture nonstop and the learners’ ability to learn. Furthermore, although some students learn best by listening, others find it easier to learn in more active learning environments.

Learning Category II: Self-Directed

Rapid change in the environment, the continuous creation of new knowledge, and ever-widening access to information in chest medicine create an increasing need to have access to information. Much of this learning takes place at the learner's initiative, after obtaining information in more formal settings (eg, lectures). Several things are known about self-directed learning: a) individual learners can become empowered to take increasingly more responsibility for various decisions associated with the learning endeavor; b) self-direction is best viewed as a continuum or characteristic that exists to some degree in every person and learning situation; c) self-direction does not necessarily mean all learning will take place in isolation from others; d) self-directed learners appear able to transfer learning, in terms of both knowledge and study skill, from one situation to another; e) self-directed study can involve various activities and resources, such as self-guided reading, participation in study groups, internships, electronic dialogues, and reflective writing activities; f) effective roles for teachers in self-directed learning are possible, such as dialogue with learners, securing resources, evaluating outcomes, and promoting critical thinking; g) using more open-learning programs, individualized study options, non-traditional teaching methodologies to complement learning.

Learning Category III: Evidence-Based

Emphasizing the direct examination of evidence from clinical research to support clinical decision making, evidence-based medicine has been proposed as a “new paradigm” for the practice of medicine. This approach requires unique skills of the physician, including the abilities to articulate a focused clinical question, efficiently search the literature, apply rules of evidence to clinical studies, and interpret the results for an individual patient.

Many physicians on the front lines of patient care do not apply this growing evidence base, perhaps owing to lack of access, skills, or acceptance. In response to these needs, medical educators, as well as advisory groups such as the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and Association of American Medical Colleges, have introduced the need to provide information to clinicians on topics related to clinical epidemiology, biostatistics, critical appraisal, and medical informatics into medical education curricula. We provide evidence-based guideline recommendations in an effort to make this process easier to implement clinical recommendations. Providing information to learners about evidence-based medicine practice, the use of our guideline recommendations and the methodology used to make those recommendations, reinforces information from categories I and II of our learning taxonomy.

Learning Category IV: Case- and Problem-Based

Case- and problem-based learning began at McMaster University Medical Center over 25 years ago. Case- and problem-based learning is a total approach to education. Problem-based learning is both a curriculum and an educational process. The curriculum consists of carefully selected and designed clinical problems that demand from the learner acquisition of critical knowledge, problem-solving proficiency, self-directed learning strategies, and team participation skills. The process replicates the commonly used systematic approach to resolving problems or meeting challenges that are encountered in life and career. Studies show that problem-based learning prepares learners to be better practitioners within their profession compared with traditional teaching methods.

Learning Category V: Simulation

Simulation is an instructional strategy that artificially replicates an event or process by assuming sufficient qualities that resemble reality that can achieve a measurable learning goal for individual(s) who participate in the experience. Types of simulation might be mannequin-based or standardized patient-based. Simulated environments are extremely effective in measuring what someone would actually do in a situation, as opposed to what they say they would do. Our approach provides the learner with an environment that may be even more conducive to learning than the real workplace. As the learner becomes increasingly competent, the simulation adds detail to bring the learner closer to reality. The end result is a close-to-real learning interaction that highlights the potential harm of not achieving competence. We use a range of simulation strategies to motivate learners. These strategies help the learner understand his or her own skill levels and allow opportunities for safe and efficient assessment.

Learning Category VI: Quality Improvement

Evaluations of quality improvement interventions are an important source of how specific interventions work and how they should be used or implemented in health-care organizations. We enable clinicians to become active participants in this level of learning by understanding tools that enable individual learners to evaluate, seek to incorporate evaluation results into their own practice, and contribute toward setting future clinical practice agendas.