The Initial Impact of the Anatomical Society Gross Anatomy Core Syllabus for Medicine in the United Kingdom:Student and Teacher Perspectives

“What do students studying medicine need to know” is an important question for curriculum planners, anatomy educators and students. The Core Regional Anatomy Syllabus (CRAS), published by the Anatomical Society in 2016, contains 156 learning outcomes (LOs) and has informed “what needs to be known.” This project explored how CRAS had impacted undergraduate anatomy and anatomists in the United Kingdom. A cross‐sectional study was designed in two phases. Phase 1, involved a survey of students in clinical years (N = 164). Phase 2 included a survey of anatomist’s views (n = 50) and focus groups of anatomy educators (N = 16). The students’ perspective showed that specific regions of CRAS are deemed less relevant. These were also the body areas where students perceived their anatomical knowledge to be more deficient. Only 46% (n = 75) of students estimated that they knew over 50% (n = 78) of the LOs. Phase two revealed that all anatomists were aware of the syllabus and 48% (n = 24) had checked the CRAS against their own institutional LOs. Anatomists had shared CRAS with colleagues 64% (n = 32) and students at 34% (n = 17), respectively. Forty‐six percent (n = 23) of anatomists reported having changed their teaching in some way because of CRAS. The focus groups generated four key themes: “support for CRAS,” “standardization and validation,” “professional identity,” and “limitations and leverage.” Overall CRAS has been well received and is establishing itself within the anatomical community as the new standard for anatomy teaching for medical students

Observations and Reflections on Teaching Electrical and Computer Engineering Courses

In this article, we make a number of observations and reflections based on our experience from many years of teaching courses in electrical and computer engineering bachelor programmes. We present important aspects of attendance, lectures, group work, and compulsory coursework, and how these can be addressed to improve student learning. Moreover, we discuss how to facilitate active learning activities, focussing on simple in-classroom activities and larger problem-based activities such as assignments, projects, an laboratory work, and highlight solving real-world problems by means of practical application of relevant theory as key to achieving intended learning outcomes. Our observations and reflections are then put into a theoretical context, including students' approaches of learning, constructive alignment, active learning, and problem-based versus problem-solving learning. Next, we present and discuss the results from two recent student evaluation surveys, one for senior (final-year) students and one for junior (first- and second-year) students, and draw some conclusions. Finally, we add some remarks regarding our findings and point to future work.acceptedVersionThis is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in [Communications in Computer and Information Science] The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94640-5_1