Talk:Medical School Curriculum

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[edit] Recommendations

Some quick thoughts, listed below. --McCormack 07:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

1. De-formalise.
2. Drop the numbers and course codes.
3. Keep the subject titles.
4. Don't plan more than you can create yourself. 5 links that connect to real content are better than 50 red links or 50 links to stub pages.
5. Giving people an idea of difficulty level is good.
6. Read Cormaggio's idea of multiple paths again, and then abandon the idea of paths altogether. Just offer the subjects, together with an indication of difficulty level (e.g. "typically done in 3rd year of med studies").
7. Don't assume 50 other med students will join you in the near future. Initially, you may be the only one who can complete things, so complete things rather than leaving them "open" for a not-yet-existent community to complete.
8. Work in a bottom-up rather than a top-down fashion. Start with one unit. Don't write just a framework - write the whole thing. You'll find that as you progress, you have to modify your approach and do double-backs to change the framework again and again. Once you have a recipe for the first one, the 2nd and 3rd ones will go faster.

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I have read your comments and I agree with most of it:

1. It is too formal
2. I wanted initially to make navigation easy but there is no need for the codes I agree. If I change the curriculum page to reflect this will you be able to change the page names they link to?
3. Subject titles will remain
4. I fully intend to have the red links unreddenned very soon as I create the module pages similar to that of the evidence-based medicine module. Soon, according to 1, they will not be modules anyway, they will be "learning" resources or something with a different name in an effort to de-formalise. There will be very few red links I think at that stage and then I will just begin moving module to module.
5. I'm not sure what you mean by that. In the department pages and module pages it gives the level to which they belong according to the curriculum. I am not sure what you are asking for but I suppose I could put their real-world levels in there too. Or maybe put the levels in the lessons as well, maybe on the curriculum main page. Alert me if I have missed the point on this one :)
6. There are two paths at the moment in the school of medicine. One follows a real-world pathway based on difficulty level, the other allows links to departments, which will soon have lessons on their main page. Do you advocate scrapping the curriculum page?
7. I don't, but I understand why you think I do. My plan of action is very vague and I am happy to be more specific with you if you like regarding my ideas but for the meantime my next steps involve categorizing all the medical pages that currently exist according to department and then choosing a department at a time to create lessons. Example, I will have a subcategory, I think, called evidence-based medicine and I will be able to sort the pages into lessons to complete the department very soon. The other departments will remain open so that anybody who happens to join has a place of reference if they wish to choose a sepcialty to work on. But these departments will have no red links until I have decided that it is the department I wish to work on next. Content will be added rapidly to the school of medicine I assure you and it is not outside one person's capability. The content will need improvement and I plan to constantly review all content one department at a time.
8. This is referring to my previous actions I think, rather than my current ones. The tree of knowledge is actually 'a tree'! I wanted to start at the trunk and then work at each branch one-by-one. The trunk is complete and I assure you that things will happen from the bottom up from my next point of action.

Thank you Go raibh mile maith agaibh 20:36, 24 June 2008 (UTC)