Syllabus or not syllabus

[Doctor Bagel]

I was just reading a little bit about my school's proposed curriculum changes that are scheduled to take place in a few years. One of the proposals was to do away with detailed course syllabi and instead assign relevant reading material from I guess textbooks and original sources. I was just wondering how many schools follow this approach and how students feel about it.

Right now, we get very detailed syllabi that generally contain all the material you need to do well on exams, but some of the professors aren't the best writers so I do find myself relying on textbooks somewhat frequently. I assumed that it was the same at all non-pbl schools, but I don't really know.

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[Doctor Bagel]

And I meant "no syllabus" not "not syllabus."

 

[SeventhSon]

I would much prefer to read straight from textbooks. However, syllabi that have everything we are responsible for on exams, and are reasonably well-written, are acceptable alternatives.

Right out a student document we are drafting for our curricular change:

"Courses should adopt textbook pedagogy

A recurring complaint from students is that courses during the first two years are poorly organized and integrated. Such criticisms are not meant to indict the faculty teaching each course, but they do reflect a general sentiment that most courses are planned at the lecture level rather than at the level of the entire course. We believe that the situation could be improved considerably and with relative ease by teaching each class from a textbook.

UCSD has a long tradition of selling syllabi in lieu of textbooks. Unlike textbooks, these syllabi have not undergone review for clarity and pedagogical soundness. Furthermore, the cost of syllabi in most cases is comparable to the cost of textbooks, negating any financial rationale behind the syllabus-based approach. We believe that designing courses to more closely follow standard textbooks will immediately introduce more organization that is possible with the current syllabus-based approach. It will also enable students to concentrate on using lecture as an opportunity for solidifying concepts, rather than scrambling to write factoids that may not be found in the syllabus.

In considering this recommendation, it is perhaps worthwhile to consider that the preclinical courses receiving the highest ratings each year are those that closely follow textbook material. Human Anatomy, Pathology, and Respiratory Physiology all use this approach. Microbiology, Basic Neurology, and Principles of Pharmacology provide a viable alternative by providing syllabi that actually read like textbooks rather than a collection of lecture slides.

More than simply increasing student satisfaction with each course, we believe that a closer adherence of textbook material will create an improved sense of integration and interaction between subtopics and medicine, and with it, an improved retention of basic medical knowledge."

 

[Ashers]

I like the syllabi we get (typically pay for, some classes give it to us for free) in that they test from the lectures that are generally from the syllabus. Then there are assigned readings from which they may pull questions for the test which weren't covered in the syllabus. I'd study the notes and read the books (for the main classes) because I figured it'd help me learn the material for step 1 anyway.

 

[SeventhSon]

i should add that your poll will be heavily influenced by the general quality of syllabi/class notes at each institution of the voting student.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

i should add that your poll will be heavily influenced by the general quality of syllabi/class notes at each institution of the voting student.

Very true. I probably should have added something to try to figure that out. Our syllabi really vary -- some are fantastic, some are too sparse, some are too detailed, some are poorly written, etc.. I would be surprised if most other students didn't see similar variation.

That brings up another issue -- how much oversight is there on the material in the syllabus at your school? I would say there's very little at our school. Each lecturer writers whatever they want to, and there you go.

 

[osli]

Our class notes are provided to us free. Well, not free... I'm sure it is figured into the tuition.

Notes are either in the form of printouts of the powerpoint lecture slides used for the lecture, or a separate lecture guide that pretty much follows their lecture slides but in a more wordy format.

In general, our notes tend to be outstanding. When I go to typical reference textbooks, I find the same information with perhaps more unnecessary detail. Our notes are more condensed than a textbook, but they are not exactly dense. A typical lecture is 10-15 pages, or 50-70 slides, which work out about the same.

I definitely like knowing that what we are tested on comes straight from our notes, with the person writing the notes also writing the test questions for that section. It removes a layer of interpretation from one source to another.

It may not be the best approach for board prep. That I just don't know... but since board prep seems to be largely under the control of the individual student anyway, I tend to think that in using multiple study sources I'll fill in any gaps that may have been there.

 

[MSKalltheway]

With the amount of detail on exams, I couldn't imagine reading a textbook and being tested out of it

It seems like the 2nd year notes here are better organized and written than the 1st year, but all the notes are on word documents, so you dont need to print them if you dont want to. We are also alloted a certain amount of pages to print on, which keeps costs down (I would hope!).

 

[ZagDoc]

I would die without my syllabus.

I refer to textbook for clarification for about 5-10% of information, but having to flip to textbooks and read the other 90-95% of it instead of having it organized ahead of time would drive me insane.

The amount of information is heavy enough as it is and theres already too few hours in a day... why make it more tedious and time consuming for students by making them do the busy work of flipping through textbooks?

 

[Hayden2102]

Our school doesn't have a syllabus so I decided to write one, based on lecture notes, relevant bits from textbooks and notes from tutes and the like.

Getting it printed out on Friday for most of my classmates in time for study break before exams.

 

[swoop]

At my school it is more or less up to the professor how they want it to be. All have to write learning objectives. With some that is all you get, others it may as well be a text, and still with others it is a high yield outline pretty much screaming this will be on the test. So far most also give pretty decent powerpoints. Some do not assign readings and expect you to find a book and the relevant sections on your own. Personally I dislike syllabi and prefer texts and every now again if necessary a research review paper (gasp). I learn well from reading and like knowing that the textbook is peer reviewed and hopefully somewhat a consensus of what is important. I have been doing quite well on my exams too. Later on I hear some of our professors are really all over the place reverting to overhead presentations and sparse syllabi. I think being good with books in those cases is an advantage.

 

[smq123]

Our school doesn't have a syllabus so I decided to write one, based on lecture notes, relevant bits from textbooks and notes from tutes and the like.

Getting it printed out on Friday for most of my classmates in time for study break before exams.

That's possibly the nicest thing I've ever heard anyone doing. You may be the most altruisitic guy on SDN.

 

[71263]

I would always order the syllabi if that option was available for my first 2 years, regardless of their 'quality'. We have enough random crap to memorize, and this saved me the trouble of trimming the fat from texts. This was more of an issue for me my first year, as M2 year, only our pharm prof made our syllabi available pre-printed.

 

[Depakote]

If I had to hunt down everything from a textbook I think I would have slipped into a stress-induced coma 2-3 weeks ago.

 

[WiscDoc]

That's possibly the nicest thing I've ever heard anyone doing. You may be the most altruisitic guy on SDN.

Even though we have all-inclusive syllabi for most (if not all classes...guess I'll find out soon enough) there is a now-third year- medical student who answered all the lecture objectives and summarized most lectures in a well organized fashion and posted it on his website. At the begining of this semester, he sent out a mass email to the M1s and 2s with the link to his website for us to use. I find them fairly helpful (to review).

 

[Hayden2102]

That's possibly the nicest thing I've ever heard anyone doing. You may be the most altruisitic guy on SDN.

Haha cheers, it's not that altruistic though, I was doing it for myself as my study mechanism anyway and it's no skin off my nose to give them to everyone else.

Although I will say that I feel like my year group is really helpful to each other. None of that competitiveness I hear a lot about.

I'm on the Medical Education Committee for next year so I'm going to look at making it a bit more of a formal document for new students coming into the degree in following years.

 

[SeventhSon]

I'm really surprised by the results.

Just out of curiosity, how much detail is in your guys' syllabi?

Our syllabi are, over half the time, just the powerpoint slides thrown together, or a big laundry list of topics in outline form.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Honestly, I'd PREFER to learn from a textbook (because I enjoy treading them).

However, teachers can't seem to grasp the idea that because a question is obscure doesn't make it good or thoughtful. It got so bad years ago at our school that they require all lecturers to

A) Make some form of notes available for each lecture
B) Submit questions that were either covered in lecture or notes (prefer both).

Apparently it's cut down on the number of teachers saying one thing and testing another, although it still occasionally happens.

 

[SeventhSon]

Honestly, I'd PREFER to learn from a textbook (because I enjoy treading them).

However, teachers can't seem to grasp the idea that because a question is obscure doesn't make it good or thoughtful. It got so bad years ago at our school that they require all lecturers to

A) Make some form of notes available for each lecture
B) Submit questions that were either covered in lecture or notes (prefer both).

Apparently it's cut down on the number of teachers saying one thing and testing another, although it still occasionally happens.

to me, the issue is a no-brainer. If you are going to ask a test question, you should have all the information you need to answer that question in the required reading (be that the syllabus or a textbook). The biggest problem we have is that teachers will test what they say in lecture but is not in the syllabus, so you basically HAVE to write down every word they say in lecture or you are screwed.

Personally, I decide to just skip lecture and miss these questions.

 

[OncoCaP]

We are officially textbook based but old syllabi are still floating around. We also have PowerPoints for most lectures as well as digital streaming video recordings of lectures. Some people use the old syllabi ... some read the texts ... some do lectures and texts ... you see all combinations. I use the textbooks for reference and go through the lecture powerpoints as much as possible. I create flashcards for as much of the material as possible. I'm certainly not keeping up ... I'm mostly using my electronic flashcards but still relying on learning and remembering what was said in lecture to a large extent. Frequently I take my notes directly as flashcards. I did fine on the first exam set ("block"). Second exam set is going to be more challenging.

 

[ZagDoc]

Course directors should have to take the shelf exams first, though, and every percent that they answer incorrectly should be equivalent to a percent refund in tuition that I get back from the school for a given class. That shouldn't be too much to ask considering the cost of the education.

Haha I like that!

 

[Jwax]

I'm really surprised by the results.

Just out of curiosity, how much detail is in your guys' syllabi?

Our syllabi are, over half the time, just the powerpoint slides thrown together, or a big laundry list of topics in outline form.

To this point, most of our syllabi have been pretty well detailed, but not so much that they are an over-load of information (like, say... a textbook?). I pretty much prefer to not have to read text if I can help it, but will resort to it if confused about a subject in the syllabi. I actually feel that knowing all of the questions that you will be tested on will almost always be found in the syllabus quite comforting. I don't like test question suprises of wow that is a topic I've never even heard of! I'm understanding of the fact that certain profs will have certain detailed questions that they like to pull out of their syllabus for the test, but it is better than it coming completely from left-field. As it has been said by others, if I had to try and learn (aka memorize) all the material in a textbook, I'd be thinking suicide by now.

I imagine that the difference in opinion comes largely from learning style mixed with goals of learning. I would say most of us are concerned with the immediate results of our studying (i.e. grades on exams), and only a few of us have the long-term oriented thoughts of learning the material. I think most of us short-term focusing folks figure we can re-"learn" the material once we find it to be applicable (and thus we can forget all the details that are not applicable to our practice).

Or maybe that's just me...

I think the only textbook I like is Netters, and I'm even putting that to the wayside after finding some great anatomy review links online. Oh and Chungs BRS Anatomy is gold for learning relations / big picture of anatomy.

 

[soonereng]

I would rather use shelf exams as the preferred standard since medical students will ultimately be judged against everyone else in the country rather than just those at a given school.

Course directors should have to take the shelf exams first...

I like the idea of shelf exam standardization for my school. It's funny that we will all take the same boards, but in my school, I have only heard like two lecturers specifically mention that they were attempting to teach what would be tested by the boards.

I also like the idea of the course directors being required to take the test. If the lecturers don't know what is on the boards, how are they supposed to help us learn it?

 

[Doctor Bagel]

So it seems like most people get a syllabus and like it.

Getting to the topic of shelf exams, that's part of my growing worry about using the syllabus as my primary learning tool. How do I know it's teaching me what I need to know to be prepared for boards? We don't have shelf exams, so I really have no clue how much overlap there is between material I'm required to learn for school and material I really need to learn for this June.

For those of you who don't get a syllabus, do you get detailed and somewhat focused reading assignments, or are you really on your own for figuring out what to use for studying. Also, is your school lecture-based?

Anyway, it seems like my school is hinting at the notion that we're sort of intellectually lazy for relying on syllabi for all our classes. Good to know we're not worse than most medical students.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Getting to the topic of shelf exams, that's part of my growing worry about using the syllabus as my primary learning tool. How do I know it's teaching me what I need to know to be prepared for boards? We don't have shelf exams, so I really have no clue how much overlap there is between material I'm required to learn for school and material I really need to learn for this June.

I think that's where it's helpful to have a review book for Step 1 and like First Aid and scan over how well the topics you're taught match up to what's in the book.

For example, take Tuberculosis. Important subject, but there's only so much you need to know for the boards on it. However if your school has a TB "Guru" at it, I guarantee he/she is going to give that subject WAY too much depth and way to much lectures because it's their baby. This may also lead to you being deficient in other areas of that same subject matter because there's only so much time to lecture.

It's good to check what you're being taught vs. what the boards want you to know. Now I'm not advocating teaching to the test exclusively, but I know from my own school experience that there were major subject areas glossed over just to give a professor time to speak about his pet subject, which was really only rectified after students let their displeasure with this practice be known.