MD Programme - learning philosophy

The Duke-NUS Medical School takes the innovative Duke School of Medicine curriculum as its foundation and builds onto that the best elements of Team-Based Learning. In Team-Based Learning, lectures, readings and the review of supplemental material on a given topic are completed before class. In-class activity focuses on assuring understanding, applying principles, and solving problems within student teams facilitated by faculty. Courses are run by multidisciplinary faculty teams of clinicians and scientists who are supported by education faculty with expertise in the science of learning. The classroom discussions are principally driven by student enquiry instead of faculty answers.

Activities are built into the learning day that require students to make meaningful choices in order to respond to challenging questions, and students are given constant feedback from their peers and faculty on their learning. Students learn techniques for effective peer feedback and the peer evaluation process allows opportunities to practice and refine these skills.

Educational technology including social media tools are integrated into all aspects of the learning experience; examples include utilizing classroom technology that facilitates interaction between students and faculty as well as converting traditional lectures into voice-annotated presentations that are reviewed prior to class sessions. This active-learning process that students are engaged in makes the knowledge acquired more relevant to the way clinicians learn and work. We call this pioneering learning method TeamLEAD (Learn, Engage, Apply, and Develop).