Office of Medical Communications

In the recent July 29 Washington Post article, "Medical school without the 'sage on the stage,'" Larner College of Medicine Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education William Jeffries, Ph.D., was quoted alongside Charles Prober, M.D., of Stanford University School of Medicine in discussing the trend in medical education to transition to an active learning-based curriculum. 

On September 8, the College's Teaching Academy hosted Prober, who is Stanford's senior associate vice provost for health education and the founding executive director of the Stanford Center for Health Education, for a presentation that continued that conversation. 

Well-known among active learning advocates, Prober has been promoting reformed medical school curriculum for years. In 2012, he published a perspective piece in The New England Journal of Medicine, titled "Lecture Halls without Lectures -- A Proposal for Medical Education," in which he proposed a "radical and important strategy" to revise medical student education. In the article, he said "...move those lectures outside the lecture hall and use class time for more active learning...Students would welcome more opportunities for case-based, problem-based, and team-based exercises -- strategies that activate prior knowledge."  

Five years later, in his much-anticipated presentation on September 8, "Reimagining & Reinvigorating Medical Student Education," Prober shared valuable insights with Larner College of Medicine faculty and staff about the trials and tribulations of medical school education reform, potential barriers and keys to success of blended learning, and a strategy for scaling medical education.