Sharing Curriculum Information between Departments and between Schools: The AAMC Curriculum Management & Information Tool (CurrMIT®)
Albert A. Salas
Assistant Vice President, Medical Education
Association of American Medical Colleges
Introduction
Medical school education is increasingly occurring at dispersed sites. Cohorts of students within the same class may be experiencing the educational program in different, and sometimes far-flung, ambulatory care sites. Additionally, courses are increasingly being taught by interdisciplinary teams, consisting of faculty from different departments. Faculty teaching at different sites and/or from different departments need to know what experiences have preceded the ones they are offering to medical students, but determining this information can be a challenge. Further, medical schools are undergoing nearly constant curriculum reform efforts, in order to integrate new content into the curriculum, as well as to address gaps and unplanned redundancies. To address these challenges, the AAMC Curriculum Management & Information Tool (CurrMIT) was developed. CurrMIT facilitates the sharing of curriculum information through its web interface, which can be used to search for data from one, many, or all of the medical schools.
Figure 1. The AAMC Curriculum Management & Information Tool
Background
Throughout the 1990’s, several medical schools developed their own stand-alone curriculum databases. Many were used for a specific project (e.g., self-study prior to accreditation, overall curriculum reform efforts, and efforts targeted at integrating specific topics into the curriculum) and then often dropped or forgotten when the project was over, the database "guru" moved on, or technology changed enough to make the existing database useless. In response to repeated requests from medical schools, the AAMC decided to take the lead in this area. The AAMC could manage the "back end" of the database from a central location, could ensure that all medical schools had access to a useful system, and could upgrade the technology as needed.
Sharing and managing medical school curricula
Al Salas from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) explains CurrMIT, a web-based tool that allows medical educators to find out about the curricula in other departments and medical schools and to manage their own.
A beta version of CurrMIT was developed as a stand-alone PC-based system using Microsoft Access, and distributed to all U.S. and Canadian member schools in 1997. After collecting feedback from two dozen schools, an online beta version was released in 1998. Forty schools tested the online version and provided feedback for nearly a year. Finally, in 1999, CurrMIT was released to all AAMC member schools. Additional details of CurrMIT’s development and technology have been previously reported.(1)
Training
The AAMC developed a set of training materials and references that can be downloaded from CurrMIT’s Help Center for self-training, and each web page within CurrMIT also includes links to context-sensitive help. The AAMC’s medical education staff also offers hands-on training for groups of schools at AAMC headquarters, for which the AAMC covers all costs for travel for two faculty or staff per school. CurrMIT training and discussion sessions are held typically at regional meetings of the AAMC’s Group on Educational Affairs. Finally, AAMC staff may travel to other off-site locations to lead training for schools that organize off-site workshops for three or more medical schools.
Access to Information
CurrMIT is password-protected, with access available to AAMC-member LCME-accredited medical schools in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, through a special arrangement between the AAMC and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM), AACOM-member schools may subscribe to CurrMIT for a fee. To date, six AACOM-member schools have subscribed. Once logged in, CurrMIT users may search for information from their own school as well as from other schools. The AAMC is currently reviewing prospects for offering the system, by subscription, to international consortia of medical schools.
All AAMC-member schools have entered, at minimum, their required courses and clerkships into CurrMIT. This information is available to the public from the online AAMC Curriculum Directory. In addition, to date, approximately two-thirds of the member schools are documenting their curriculum in great detail—describing the individual sessions (e.g., lectures, labs, small group discussions, ward rounds) through use of keywords that cover the details of instruction, such as educational methods and sites, content, assessment methods and outcome objectives. Any AAMC-member faculty may obtain access CurrMIT, regardless of whether the medical school is using CurrMIT; however, access to the system is determined by the medical education office (or equivalent) at each medical school.
The AAMC encourages medical schools to provide CurrMIT access to faculty. The system has been used by faculty to see what is going on in their own curriculum, as well as in others. Some medical schools log in to CurrMIT during nearly all curriculum committee meetings, to allow them to answer any curriculum questions that arise. Others are using CurrMIT to document their curricula in advance of a major curriculum reform project, or to assist in a self-study in advance of an accreditation visit. To see some specific examples of CurrMIT’s use, follow the “Solution Scenarios” link from CurrMIT’s public web page (http://www.aamc.org/meded/curric/).
Organization of Data
CurrMIT data is organized primarily around the Course record. A Course is the largest organizing body of information for delivery of information; and Course can also mean a clerkship, a block, or a theme. Each Course has certain required fields (academic year, graduating class year) as well as several other fields. Within a Course, there may be one or many Sessions. A session is an individual educational experience through which the content of a Course is delivered, and is typically used to describe a single module or meeting within a Course, such as a lecture, lab, small group discussion, case, or ward rounds.
CurrMIT contains tables of keywords called Elements that can be used to describe the details of instruction (as noted previously, these can be keywords or word strings describing items such as assessment methods, educational methods, content, and curricular objectives). Elements can be linked to a Course, in which case they become Course Elements; or they may linked to a Session, in which case they become Session Elements.
Finally, each Session may include one or more Sections. Sections may be used to detail the specifics of individual meetings of a Session, such as when it occurs, where it occurs, instructors, and the number of students enrolled. For example, a Lecture Session might have only one Section (all students attending at the same time and place); but a small group or laboratory Session may have multiple Sections, describing where and when the small groups, or labs, occur. Because Sessions detail the actual content and experiences, Sections are used primarily to display calendar information in CurrMIT, for schools that wish to use CurrMIT’s calendar. The vast majority of medical schools are not using Sections, because they have their own means of providing calendars to students and faculty. Figure 2 illustrates a CurrMIT course record.
Figure 2. Conceptual Diagram of a CurrMIT Course Record
CurrMIT’s Elements tables include controlled vocabularies--such as MeSH and the USMLE Subject Headings--as well as uncontrolled vocabularies, such as educational methods, sites, assessment methods, and topics that have been entered by medical schools. Included among the tables are the outcome objectives from the AAMC’s Medical Schools Objectives Project and the competencies from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), so that schools can document where specific outcome objectives or ACGME competencies are being addressed in the curriculum. Schools may also load their own tables of Elements; or they may add their own Elements to existing tables, if the tables are uncontrolled. For example, several schools have loaded their own outcome objectives or competencies; or specific educational methods, sites or assessment methods that are in use at their locations.
Most CurrMIT users load their data via the online user interface. However, CurrMIT also includes an XML dataload tool, which allows medical schools to load their data to CurrMIT electronically. Schools that have their own databases, but which wish to load to CurrMIT, for example, for benchmarking against other schools, are using the XML dataload tool. Schools may also download data from CurrMIT via XML.
Figure 3. CurrMIT XML Schema for a Course
Searching CurrMIT
There are numerous methods for searching for curriculum information in CurrMIT. All fields are searchable, and CurrMIT includes, in its Curriculum Information section, methods by which users search using AAMC pre-defined templates, using custom searches with user-defined criteria, and using user- or AAMC-developed SQL Select queries. However, the most commonly-used search tool, Quick Search, requires little knowledge of CurrMIT structure and organization. Users may simply enter a keyword, or multiple keywords strung together will Boolean connectors AND, OR or AND NOT, and hit the Search button, and CurrMIT will search through all fields and tables for the desired information. CurrMIT then returns the search with search terms highlighted; and Course and Session names that are returned are hot links to the associated Course and Session records.
Figure 4. Portion of Results of Quick Search on the Term Geriatric
Usage
CurrMIT use is high—and growing. There are currently over 13,000 faculty with usernames and passwords. Although logging of searches was only partially documented until late 2004, it is estimated that more than 50,000 searches were conducted in CurrMIT by faculty that year. To date, CurrMIT currently contains more than 25,000 courses and 235,000 sessions, and more than 820,000 elements have been linked to Courses or Sessions in CurrMIT, describing details of instruction.
More information on CurrMIT is available at http://www.aamc.org/meded/curric/ or by sending a note to helpcurrmit@aamc.org.
References
- Salas AA, Anderson MB, LaCourse L, Allen R, Candler CS, Cameron T, Lafferty D. CurrMIT: A Tool for Managing Medical School Curricula. Acad Med 2003 78: 275-279.
