This year, one of the Professional Development Workshops (PDWS), Integrating Basic Science and Clinical Medicine, will be sponsored by Aquifer.
Integrating Basic Science and Clinical Medicine
(Sponsored by Aquifer)
Workshop: Integrating Basic Science and Clinical Medicine: From Curriculum to Classroom to Learner Assessment (2 Parts)
When: Part 1 – Saturday, June 6, 2026, 8:00 AM – 11:00 AM EDT; Part 2 – Saturday, June 6, 2026, 12:30 PM – 3:30 PM EDT
Presented by: Eva Gallman, David Harris, Julie Kerry, Kathryn Miller, Kristel Montano, Khiet Ngo, Grace Park, and Leah Sheridan
This 6-hour, faculty development course will begin with an interactive group discussion to identify key barriers to designing and implementing curricula that promote effective cognitive integration and transfer in the classroom. This course will immerse participants in the Aquifer Sciences Curriculum, a freely available curriculum collaboratively created by IAMSE and Aquifer and integrating basic science and clinical medicine. Following a brief didactic on concept-based learning and knowledge organization, cognitive integration, and collaborative teaching, participants will be formally introduced to the Aquifer Sciences Curriculum Database and will explore its organizational structure and the pedagogical approach of the Integrated Learning Objective (ILO) to support cognitive integration. The core concepts that make up the backbone of this Curriculum define the endpoint of necessary basic science understanding to permit a clinical trainee to justify safe and effective clinical decisions. Participants will work in small groups to consider how the core concepts of the Curriculum can facilitate backwards curriculum design and will modify existing classroom experiences to take advantage of the approach to cognitive integration promoted by the Integrated Learning Objective approach.
Participants will then consider the use of Integrated Illness Scripts and Mechanism of Disease maps to develop classroom activities that promote cognitive integration. Participants will actively engage in an Integrated Learning Sessions (ILS) for a pre-clerkship course and will outline their own session using a template designed to compare and contrast the underlying concepts and mechanisms that underpin a variety of clinical features in related and disparate clinical conditions to inform safe clinical decision-making. Participants will then practice using these tools in the design of learning activities and assessments within their own curricular frameworks and across various educational settings (e.g., longitudinal clerkships, clerkship didactics, bedside teaching, active classrooms, faculty development). Concrete examples of the use of the tools and assessments across several schools and various educational settings will be provided. Finally, the value of the considered pedagogical and assessment approaches to foster development of the Master Adaptive Learner will be evaluated.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this workshop, attendees will be able to
- navigate the Aquifer Sciences Curriculum Database
- develop an approach to map their home curriculum to the basic science core concepts that form the foundation of the Aquifer Sciences Curriculum
- construct integrated learning sessions that take advantage of the pedagogical approach of Integrated Illness Scripts and Mechanism of Disease Maps
- develop assessment methodology to measure successful cognitive integration and transfer ability in the minds of their learners.
Each workshop requires an additional $140 USD registration fee. Already registered? You can still add PDWS to your schedule by modifying your registration. To do so, you may click here.
If you have any questions or would like assistance adding a workshop to your schedule, please contact support@iamse.org.