Strategies to support self-regulated learning in integrated, student-centered curricula.

PURPOSE: With undergraduate medical education shifting to an integrated, student-centered approach, self-regulated learning (SRL) skills are critical for student success. Educational research holds that learning strategy effectiveness is context dependent. Our study aims to explore what strategies medical students use to support SRL when engaged in the specific context of an integrated, student-centered curriculum. APPROACH: This study took place in two medical schools with integrated, student-centered curricula. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with first-year medical students from both schools, asking them to reflect on the learning strategies they used throughout their first year of medical school. Interview data was analyzed first deductively using the SRL framework and then inductively to understand the specific strategies being used. FINDINGS: Students engaged in strategies to support SRL in ways that were unique to the integrated, student-centered context. We found that medical students developed strategies to plan for integration and building connections across material during all three phases of self-regulated learning. INSIGHTS: By identifying specific tasks and behaviors students utilized during their first year of medical school, this study provides a roadmap that students and educators can use to help students become self-regulated learners.

Fun, collaboration and formative assessment: skinquizition, a class wide gaming competition in a medical school with a large class.

BACKGROUND: Formative assessments are tools for assessing content retention, providing valuable feedback to students and teachers. In medical education, information technology-supported games can accommodate large classes divided into student teams while fostering active engagement. AIM: To establish an innovative stimulating approach to formative assessments for large classes furthering collaborative skills that promotes learning and student engagement linked to improvement of academic performance. METHODS AND RESULTS: Using audience response technology, a fast-paced, competitive, interactive quiz game involving dermatology was developed. This stimulating setting, provided on the last day of class, prepares students for high-stakes exams to continue their medical education while training collaborative skills as supported by survey outcomes and average class scores. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS: Educational game competitions provide formative assessments and feedback for students and faculty alike, enhancing learning and teaching processes. In this study, we show an innovative approach to accommodate a large class divided into competing teams furthering collaborative skills reflected by academic performance.

Developing Clinician-Educators: a Qualitative Analysis of Structured Reflections from Participatory Teaching in the Final Year in an Integrated Medical School Program.

Objective: This study aimed to describe fourth-year medical students' experiences, recorded and tracked in structured reflective teaching logs (RTLs), as participants in a year-long longitudinal medical student-as-teacher elective. Methods: Thirteen (13) participants from two medical student-as-teacher elective cohorts completed 20 contact hours of self-selected teaching. Participants chose three different learning environments spanning the first 3 years of the medical school curriculum. Reflections were entered into an online spreadsheet with guided prompts (RTL). Open-ended text in the RTLs was analyzed using an inductive qualitative research approach. Open coding was applied across all meaningful segments of text, identifying themes that were validated internally with three co-authors and one methodology expert without formal program involvement. Results: Narratives revealed detailed descriptions and reflections of participant experiences. Analysis revealed eight themes: (1) Joy of Teaching; (2) Teaching Effectiveness; (3) Feedback; (4) Effective Patient-Physician Communication; (5) Assessment; (6) Differential Diagnosis Development; (7) Standardized Case Development; and (8) Training for Teaching in Residency. Conclusion: Fourth-year medical student participants in a longitudinal medical student-as-teacher elective effectively used RTLs from participatory teaching to help facilitate their own development as clinician-educators. Themes identified in RTLs reflect students' awareness of teaching skill requirements and readiness for the next workplace, residency. Informed by situativity theory, formal teaching opportunities in authentic learning environments bestow students with critical formative teaching experience and awareness of the roles as clinician-educators during their undergraduate years.

Curriculum Design and Scholarship for New Educators: A Professional Development Workshop for Medical Students.

Introduction: Medical students' professional development includes their role as educators. Despite greater opportunities to join medical education curriculum development, medical students' engagement in these activities remains limited. A recent national study on student leadership in curricular change revealed a formal lack of leadership and training in medical education as significant barriers. Medical students' unawareness of how to disseminate curricula as educational scholarship and its value to their careers also restricts the fullness of their formation as educators. Methods: We designed a 3-hour, interactive, project-focused conference workshop for medical students without prior knowledge in curriculum development. Of participants, 64 worked in 10 groups creating medical curricula using Kern's six-step approach in student-facilitated breakout sessions. Completed group projects were presented, including brief action plans for transforming their work into scholarship. The workshop was evaluated using a mixed-methods approach. Results: Of survey respondents, 44 mostly medical students, faculty, and administrators from different institutions rated the workshop as a very positive experience, and the pacing of the breakout groups as effective. A notable increase in self-reported mastery, as measured by learning objectives aligned with Kern's six-step model, was recorded from student respondents as compared to faculty. A sense of readiness to participate in curricular decisions either at the home institution or in individual career paths was evident from narrative comments. Discussion: Our workshop provided medical students with a foundation in curriculum development and educational scholarship. Session design provided flexibility in the pace of breakout sessions and allowed in-depth discussion of educational topics.

The Reflective Teaching Log (RTL): Effective Documentation of Participatory Teaching Requirements.

We created a reflective teaching log for a student-as-teacher elective to track students' required participatory teaching and to provide a mechanism for reflective evaluation. This Minute Paper-based log is easy to use and can be adapted to similar programs capturing insights of students' teaching experiences and supports reflective learning.

The major tegument structural protein VP22 targets areas of dispersed nucleolin and marginalized chromatin during productive herpes simplex virus 1 infection.

The herpes simplex virus (HSV) major tegument structural protein VP22 resides in multiple subcellular regions during productive infection. During an analysis of the molecular determinants of these localizations, we observed that a transfected fusion of the C-terminal portion of VP22, containing its pat4 nuclear localization signal, with GFP lacked nucleolar sparing compared to GFP alone. Thus, the initial goal was to determine whether VP22 associates with nucleoli. Using an optimized indirect immunofluorescence system to visualize nucleolin and viral proteins, we observed that VP22 present in VP22-expressing Vero (V49) cells "surrounded" nucleolin. These two initial findings implied that VP22 might associate directly with nucleoli. We next analyzed HSV-infected cells and observed that at late times, anti-nucleolin immune reactivity was dispersed throughout the nuclei while it retained uniform, circular staining in mock-infected cells. Time course infection experiments indicated that nucleolin initiated its transition from uniform to dispersed structures between 2 and 4 hpi. Comparison of Hoechst stained nuclei showed bright anti-nucleolin staining localized to regions of marginalized chromatin. These effects required de novo infected cell protein synthesis. A portion of VP22 detected in nuclei at 4 and 6 hpi localized to these areas of altered nucleolin and marginalized chromatin. VP22 was excluded from viral replication compartments containing the viral regulatory protein ICP22. Finally, altered nucleolin and marginalized chromatin were detected with a VP22-null virus, indicating that VP22 was not responsible for these nuclear architecture alterations. Thus, we conclude that nuclear VP22 targets unique subnuclear structures early (<6hpi) during herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) infection.

A conserved carboxy-terminal domain in the major tegument structural protein VP22 facilitates virion packaging of a chimeric protein during productive herpes simplex virus 1 infection.

Recombinant virus HSV-1(RF177) was previously generated to examine tegument protein VP22 function by inserting the GFP gene into the gene encoding VP22. During a detailed analysis of this virus, we discovered that RF177 produces a novel fusion protein between the last 15 amino acids of VP22 and GFP, termed GCT-VP22. Thus, the VP22 carboxy-terminal specific antibody 22-3 and two anti-GFP antibodies reacted with an approximately 28 kDa protein from RF177-infected Vero cells. GCT-VP22 was detected at 1 and 3 hpi. Examination of purified virions indicated that GCT-VP22 was incorporated into RF177 virus particles. These observations imply that at least a portion of the information required for virion targeting is located in this domain of VP22. Indirect immunofluorescence analyses showed that GCT-VP22 also localized to areas of marginalized chromatin during RF177 infection. These results indicate that the last fifteen amino acids of VP22 participate in virion targeting during HSV-1 infection.

Nuclear localizations of the herpes simplex virus type 1 tegument proteins VP13/14, vhs, and VP16 precede VP22-dependent microtubule reorganization and VP22 nuclear import.

Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) induces microtubule reorganization beginning at approximately 9 h postinfection (hpi), and this correlates with the nuclear localization of the tegument protein VP22. Thus, the active retention of this major virion component by cytoskeletal structures may function to regulate its subcellular localization (A. Kotsakis, L. E. Pomeranz, A. Blouin, and J. A. Blaho, J. Virol. 75:8697-8711, 2001). The goal of this study was to determine whether the subcellular localization patterns of other HSV-1 tegument proteins are similar to that observed with VP22. To address this, we performed a series of indirect immunofluorescence analyses using synchronously infected cells. We observed that tegument proteins VP13/14, vhs, and VP16 localized to the nucleus as early as 5 hpi and were concentrated in nuclei by 9 hpi, which differed from that seen with VP22. Microtubule reorganization was delayed during infection with HSV-1(RF177), a recombinant virus that does not produce full-length VP22. These infected cells did not begin to lose microtubule-organizing centers until 13 hpi. Repair of the unique long 49 (UL49) locus in HSV-1(RF177) yielded HSV-1(RF177R). Microtubule reorganization in HSV-1(RF177R)-infected cells occurred with the same kinetics as HSV-1(F). Acetylated tubulin remained unchanged during infection with either HSV-1(F) or HSV-1(RF177). Thus, while alpha-tubulin reorganized during infection, acetylated tubulin was stable, and the absence of full-length VP22 did not affect this stability. Our findings indicate that the nuclear localizations of tegument proteins VP13/14, VP16, and vhs do not appear to require HSV-1-induced microtubule reorganization. We conclude that full-length VP22 is needed for optimal microtubule reorganization during infection. This implies that VP22 mainly functions to reorganize microtubules later, rather than earlier, in infection. That acetylated tubulin does not undergo restructuring during VP22-dependent, virus-induced microtubule reorganization suggests that it plays a role in stabilizing the infected cells. Our results emphasize that VP22 likely plays a key role in cellular cytopathology during HSV-1 infection.