CURE2011 (Curriculum Review 2011)

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "fuad" <fuad@kb.usm.my>
To: akadppsp@groups.wargakk.usm.my
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 5:32:52 PM
Subject: [akadppsp] Update on CURE2011 (Curriculum Review 2011)


Dear academic staff of the School of Medical Sciences, USM,

as had been informed before, the school is currently undergoing a curriculum review exercise for the undergraduate medical curriculum. The review process began in 2011. Under a steering committee chaired by Dato' Prof Wan Mohd, a series of meetings and workshops produced several versions of a revised curricular structure, one of which was chosen as the most suitable. This initial structure was presented to and accepted by the school board.

This initial structure then underwent several fine-tunings and recently (on the 29th of January 2012) the draft revised curricular structure was again presented to the School Board and was accepted as the final structure.

In summary, the features of the final new curriculum structure are as follows:

a) Contains two phases , Phase I which are Years 1 and 2 and Phase II which are Years 3, 4 and 5. This means the students will have an increased clinical apprenticeship phase starting from Year 3. This will give a total of 123 weeks' clinical teaching, exceeding the MQA/Dean's council requirement of 120 weeks.

b) Allows graduate entry as well as a pathway for MD-BSc or MD-BSc-PHd for selected students.

c) Problem-based Learning beginning in Year 1 until Year 5, beginning with problem analysis leading to problem-solving in the clinical years.

d) Features a modular structure.

Currently, the Phase I (led by Dr. Mohd Suhaimi Abdul Wahab) and Phase II (Led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nik Zainal) subcommittees are hard at work to fill in the structure, aided by members from all departments involved in undergraduate teaching. They are also aided by other subcommittees i.e. the Graduate entry/MD-PhD subcommittee (led by Dr. Muzaimi), the Evaluation subcommittee (Led by Prof. Rogayah Jaafar), the PBL subcommittee (led by Prof. Shahid Hassan) and a few others.

Apart from numerous meetings of the subcommittees which are currently on-going, planned activities are as follows:

1. 2nd February, 2012: Talk on 'Designing an Assessment Program for the Undergraduate Medical Curriculum: Characteristics of Current Assessment Tools and Their Selection ' by Prof. Shahid to aid review committee members in revising the assessment strategy in the MD curriculum.

2. 29th February, 2012: 2nd Pre-workshop Exercise involving the School Exco, Curriculum Review Committee, Heads of Department and Student Representatives to have a look at the content and implementation of the revised curriculum.

3. 4th and 5th March, 2012: PBL Review Workshop involving the PBL subcommittee, Phase Chairpersons and other members to draft out recommendations regarding implementation of PBL, PSL and clinical teaching in the new curriculum.

4. A final Curriculu Review workshop involving the curriculum review committee, Heads of Department, Student Representatives and representatives of several stakeholders in planned sometime in April.

The new curriculum is slated to begin in the 2013-2014 academic year.

I would like to thank all those involved so far for their commitment. May Allah bless our endeavours.

Dr. Ahmad Fuad bin Abdul Rahim
Secretary (1)
Curriculum Review Committee 2011

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My response:

My first impression after reading the e-mail (fwd to me by Dr Aini Suzana today, 2 Feb 2012) is the USM medical school is killing its own dreams. It made a spiral model for its teaching approach and that is no longer valid comes 2013/2014. There is no organ-system approach anymore as everything will be disordered (jumbled up) and just called 'MODULE'. Now clinical application comes in Year 1 teaching. Year 1 teaching is now compressed into 6 months with as much of the old lecture topics retained. The 5 modules will need to have basic plus clinical application. Boring SGDs will be turned into yet boring SLUs. Boring FLMs will be turned into yet more boring SLUs. Practicals are slashed and everything is now 'dry practical' except for wet urine. Already medical students don't get to see, smell or touch corpses. What is there now in medical teaching-learning? Nothing! The entire program needs to meet 120 weeks minimum clinical contact. This I will call 'Hell's Teaching of Medicine' - we go to Hell for teaching medicine in future!

It is no wonder that when I get Master of Pathology (MPath) students, and I listened to their presentations, they were just parrots! They just 'copy & paste' text & images from the Internet and presented to us at the dept. When I had to evaluate, I didn't know what to evaluate or ask them! There's nothing new that they could tell me. It points to a larger underlying problem - they had learned nothing useful as an undergraduate, pursued housemanship and the 2 years compulsory hospital work before joining us. That fault I think lies with the 'emptiness' of our modern medical curricula design. It is high time, lecturers think through and look at the real issues rather than try to meet silly MQA requirements. What is the meaning of an APEX University and being 'autonomous' when everything must be done according to set rules by people who aren't dedicated to what they are doing? They are ruining lives rather than saving lives! Don't fiddle with education unless you are the best and have the best of brains. Learn from universities which have turned out very good doctors, not the average doctors like most doctors are today - they didn't get a good medical education. Learn for God's sake! I am appalled and not happy. There is no human-ness in many curriculum designs. We are humans, not canned robots! Pikir lah sikit! Canggih tapi bodoh!

I have not been in any Curriculum Review except one in Terengganu. I don't like attending any of them. Why? Fake people attend them for food! Because I have come to know that people who fiddle with curriculum are the people who don't teach in the lecture halls. Even the people at the higher level in the MQA, they travel the globe and look at people's curricula but many I know have not even a degree in Education or Educational Technology. So? How am I to judge a curriculum will withstand the pressures of modern day demands for education? We have so much technologies today that I feel teaching today is not a matter of knowing everything before lecture time but knowing how to plan the resources well so students have a lot of resources which they can access and therefore learn in their own sweet time. I very much believe that learning is something personal as well as learning face-to-face in the large lecture hall. The final assimilation of knowledge takes place when the student is alone by herself/himself in a conducive environment - her/his own hostel room that is not shared or overcrowded (eg 4-6 to a room!).

When lecturers start to revamp curriculum as they have to comply with MQA requirements so they can stay in the education business, I think everyone forgets and they either intentionally or unintentionally forget to take note of modern technologies we have today (and which students prefer and are used to). So modern technologies get left out in modern curriculum planning.

So what can we do? I will almost be out of the system (retired or expired) by the time the new curriculum takes place in 2013/2014. My only worry is, are we paying for quality education or are we still stuck with our inability to see beyond the traditional classroom?

I am glad I was never a part of any curriculum design as my idea of learning is very different, more individualistic, self-paced, unpressured, continuous learning, but that brings out the best in any student. Parents are paying (students are taking loans) so they should be given the best of educational opportunities that exist. Even Nabi Muhammad s.a.w. said we train children for their time (future) and not our time. So that alone tells us whether we are doing things right or wrong. 

Prof Faridah