Irregularly irregular reminder that trying to interpret Portal timing is like trying to interpret tea leaves and while that fact is frustrating, patience is a virtue.
1) Say you get invited for an interview at the Erie campus. Can you still get accepted to seton hill?
2) I can't imagine what the PBL exams are based on? Are they based on specific topics like chapters 1-8 in pharmacology book and chap. 1-10 in book x,y,z. Or is it all based on the specific patient cases? Both?
3) do you receive one grade for the entire semester in just PBL? Or are the grades based on individual aspects of PBL. What does the report card look like? I'm just trying to envision how it would all work out since I'm so used to the format of one specific course topic (say biology) receives one grade.
4) about these "learning issues" that are discussed in the group session. Are these assigned learning issues by faculty or do the students identify them? Are the tests based on these? Are these specific learning objectives?
5) how many tests do you take for the "over 70 cases" that are studied. The math isn't adding up for me. They say the cases are studied in sets of 6-8 and the study of each set (6-8) is followed by a written exam. Yet then go on to say that there are 3 written exams each semester. So that would be 18-24 cases. I guess 3 semesters of that?
6) Are patient cases discussed in the ISP pathway during the first 2 years as well?
1) I think so, but I don't know how this works.
2/4) After you finish a case, your group assigns chapters/pages for "learning issues" (FLIs-- I think the F stands for final but honestly I forget). So, for a first year case that ended up being diabetes, you might pick the glucose metabolism chapter in biochemistry, the pancreas chapter in physiology, the diabetes chapter in pharmacology and some pathology pages from the endocrine chapter. During first year, there are also some common learning issues (CLIs) that are assigned for all groups. Tests are based on the FLIs and CLIs. There aren't specific learning objectives; you're responsible for the whole chapter.
3) Yep, one semester for the whole semester of PBL. So for example your first semester report card would show grades for PBL, anatomy, embryology, histology, H&P, OPP, and healthcare management I (that's at Seton Hill, might be arranged slightly differently in Erie). The number of credits per class varies a bit between semesters.
5) I never added up how many cases there were total over the two years; I suppose I should. First semester first year starts off slow with PBL so you have two exams-- I think both over 5 cases, with a higher page count per case and total for the second exam. Second semester first year and first semester second year are both three exams, each covering seven cases and 700 pages total. Second semester second year is also three exams, but the case and page count starts to taper a bit so you can study more for boards. I don't know if that adds up to more than 70 or just shy of 70, but I don't know if it matters. It's a lot of reading-- and the reading is what matters really, not the cases.
6) Don't know how DSP works.
Edited: grammar