| Abstract/Notes |
Background: Keeping current with developments in the chiropractic profession and in educational practices can be an overwhelming task without a community effort. New information is often obtained using online resources. Without a formal teaching center available, it was necessary to devise other plans that included faculty Lunch and Learn sessions and journal club meetings with the specific aim to promote discussion of current topics in teaching and learning, as well as scientific research, among faculty. Methods: Lunch and Learn is a program centered on topics to improve teaching and learning. Participants brought their own lunch, and sessions started 25 minutes after the scheduled end of morning classes and ended 15 minutes before the start of afternoon classes. Presentation topics were limited to 10 minutes and a maximum of 3 overheads, with handouts kept to a minimum as well. Facilitators were encouraged to provide online resource links. Open discussion was held for the second 15 minutes. A call for facilitator and/or topic at end of each session occupied the final 5 minutes. For journal club, 1 to 5 papers per quarter were selected for review and the list of articles was posted. A meeting would convene in the 8th week of the quarter for general discussion. A specific aim of this journal club is to identify important advances in chiropractic and to stimulate detailed discussions and commentary in our institution among the faculty. Results: The Lunch and Learn session has featured 29 topics presented by faculty from the various colleges within the university, on Thursdays of weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8 of each term. There have been 2 journal club meetings with another planned for September 2005. The Association of Chiropractic Colleges Conference and other educational conferences provide many of the topics for Lunch and Learn. Voluntary participation by faculty with topics of their own and others who are invited to present “timely topics” provide the valuable content of these sessions. Articles selected for discussion in the winter quarter journal club's first meeting covered the impact of the "evidence-based medicine" concept on the chiropractic profession. The keystone article was published in the Journal of Social Medicine. The topic of the second journal club meeting was the discussion of an educational model followed by medical schools published in the British Medical Journal. A satisfaction survey has been done for most of the sessions. The faculty comments have been favorable and the survey includes questions to determine topics of interest for planning. Discussion: The program has terrific potential and the success that has been achieved is acceptable for its first year. According to Dr. Milton Cox, it takes five years to detect a change in the faculty culture following changes in teaching and learning styles. These sessions on teaching and learning have been well received by faculty. This is an area of growth for our institution. This abstract is reproduced with the permission of the publisher. |
