Survey Policy for Medical Student Programs

The UCSF School of Medicine (SOM) employs consistent procedures for notification and processing of surveys administered to medical students. The school requires anyone who sends surveys to medical students to do so in accordance with the procedures outlined in this policy. While surveys may be developed for a variety of purposes, any data collected from UCSF SOM students by UCSF faculty and students should be made available to the Office of Medical Education upon request. Management of these data is essential for the success of this policy and its intent to reduce survey burden and strengthen research in medical education, curriculum evaluation and the overall quality of the data.

All surveys developed in accordance with this policy that gather feedback on core curricular programs and student services will clearly display the following official endorsement: “This survey is endorsed by the School of Medicine for the purpose of improving our programs and services.”

Other surveys developed with OET consultation will bear the following: “This survey is endorsed by the School of Medicine.”

These endorsements are intended to improve completion rates by our medical students. In the absence of either endorsement, students should complete any survey about their medical school experience at their own discretion.

Outside vendors, organizations and individuals not officially associated with the School of Medicine must have approval from the Associate Dean for Student Affairs to survey UCSF medical students. The School of Medicine reserves the right to refuse access to our medical students by external constituents.

For more information on the survey policy see: http://medschool.ucsf.edu/oet/policies/medstudent_survey_policy.aspx

Admissions Workshop Draws Crowd of 266 Prospective Applicants

The Admissions Workshop, held on Saturday, March 21st, drew in a crowd of 266 interested prospective applicants. Dr. Alma Martinez welcomed the audience and served as moderator throughout the day. The event included a talk by Dean David Wofsy, a faculty panel, a student panel, an introduction of the post baccalaureate program, and a question and answer session. Faculty panelists, Drs. Megan Mahoney, Susan Obata, and Peter Ohara, were asked to provide insight on the profile of a good candidate for admission. Life as a medical student--from application to graduation--was the focus of the student panel. Many in the audience were interested in the post baccalaureate program and Valerie Margol answered all of their questions. The event, which has been held annually for the past ten years, is organized by the Office of Outreach and Academic Advancement and has gained so much popularity that the audience included visitors from Southern California and out of state.

History of PodCasting and LectureCasting in SOM

HISTORY OF PODCASTING AND LECTURECASTING AT THE UCSF SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Here’s a short timeline showing the evolution and development of Content Capture (aka: Podcasting) at UCSF.

Podcasting learning content has been a major collaboration between the faculty, students, course administrators, Classroom Support (IRTS), and the Office of Educational Technology. Podcasting grew from only a few users when first available in 2006 to now being used by the majority of students.

Spring 2006: The First Pilot in BMB
Podcasting at UCSF started in the Spring of 2006 as a student initiated project managed by the Office of Educational Technology. For this original pilot, students attached iPods to each faculty member to record each individual lecture, edit each lecture by hand, and post it to iROCKET for the whole class.

Fall 2006: Podcasting rolls out for all - using iPods
The iPod pilot was a success and was then rolled out in a large scale to all the Essential Core courses (to capture all required lectures for the first two years). More than 650 hours of Essential Core content was captured and delivered to students during this phase.

Spring 2008: Pilot of next generation LectureCasting
The student demand increased, but the production was done by hand and hard to scale, so the next step was to automate. Classroom Support (IRTS) and the Office of Educational Technology collaborated on a next generation Podcasting pilot to design the next phase and make it scalable.

2008-2009: Next Generation Podcasting & LectureCasting
In the Fall of 2008, Classroom Support provided expert media resources, upgraded the rooms to capture content, and launched a new LectureCasting service to all Essential Core courses (providing about 1000 hours of lecture content per year for students to review). This new system automated much of the content capture and boosted the quality with enhanced LectureCasts ( visual + audio). This enhanced system increased student usage.

Upcoming Next Version: Automated, Faster Turnaround
The next phase is under review from the Content Capture and Delivery Working Team charged by the campus Educational Systems Advisory Group to choose a commercial application and vendor to provide a new campus-wide solution in place for the Fall of 2009. Currently, much of this system is automated but still requires labor intensive work on the backend and needs more automation to be scalable. The next version will use commercial grade applications and automate the whole process with high quality and a faster turnaround time.


SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS:
The majority of students at UCSF use Podcasting casually. Most use it to make up for missed lectures; many use it to review difficult material.
There has been a large jump this year in student usage
- last year, 66 percent of all students downloaded at least one Podcasts (audio only format available)
- this year, 90 percent downloaded at least one (either audio only or enhanced LectureCasts )
Students report the jump in usage is due to LectureCasting (visual + audio) which more students find useful.

For more information contact the iROCKET team at irocket@ucsf.edu.

Match Day at UCSF

Thursday March 19 was Match Day, the day on which 140 excited fourth-year medical students learned where they will be spending the next four (or more) years of their lives. A few moments before 9:00am, students-- joined by families, friends, staff, and faculty-- collected envelopes containing their “matches” to various residency programs throughout the country. At 9:00am sharp the group joined in a lively countdown. As the envelopes were opened, students responded with cheers, shrieks, high-fives, hugs, and a few tears. Popular specialties among the class of 2009 included: Internal Medicine (32 students), Pediatrics (15 students), Emergency Medicine (15 students), and Obstetrics-Gynecology (14 students). Nearly 1/3 of the class will remain at UCSF for their residency, with the rest of the group scattering to spots throughout the country.

Update on Admissions

On Thursday, March 5th the Office of Admissions interviewed the last group of applicants for the fall 2009 entering class. Applicant interviews were conducted every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday from September 25, 2008 until March 5, 2009 (excluding campus holidays). In all, over 500 amazing applicants visited our campus to participate in the interview process. Each interview day started with a welcome by Dr. David Wofsy, Associate Dean for Admissions, and was followed by a brief Financial Aid session. Applicants were then given an opportunity to attend a first or second year class, followed by lunch with an advanced student and a campus tour led by a first year student. Interviews with admissions committee members were usually in the afternoon from 1:00 – 5:00 pm. Interview days are not only an effective way for us to learn more about the applicants but also for the applicants to learn more about UCSF!

NRMP: Medical students celebrate biggest Match Day on record

On Thursday, Match Day, nearly 30,000 applicants to the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP)--including more than 15,000 U.S. medical school seniors--learned where they will spend their years of residency training. The
2009 Match was the largest in history: 29,890 applicants participated. More than half the participants were U.S. medical school seniors (15,638), 400 more than in 2008. Participants vied for one of the 22,427 first-year residency positions available through the Match this year--the most ever offered by the NRMP; 95 percent of these positions were filled during the Match. Ninety-three percent of U.S. medical school seniors matched this year;
82 percent of these students matched to one of their top three choices.

Information: Go to http://www.aamc.org/newsroom/pressrel/2009/090319.htm

One Password to Rule them All

We have to juggle a lot of passwords at UCSF and someday we may have one account and password for all of the services we need to access. Until that day, I have compiled the password rules for the most common passwords we have to manage so that I could create one password to rule them all. If you follow these password rules then you can set up one password for the following services:

1. SOM Exchange (used to log into computers and email in the SOM Dean's Office)
2. myAccess
3. GALEN
4. HBS Timekeeping System

Here are the rules that each password must follow in order to work with all 4 of these services.

Password Rules:

1. Passwords must be at least 7 characters.
2. No character can appear more than twice.
   
3. At least 1 letter is required.
4. At least 1 number is required.
5. At least 1 symbol is required.
6. At least 1 UPPERCASE letter.
7. At least 1 lowercase letter.
8. The last 6 passwords cannot be used.
9. No usernames are allowed.

To change your password to one that meets these 9 rules and is the same for all 4 services, create your new password and reset them as follows:

1. To reset your SOM Exchange password,
   
2. To reset your myAccess password visit https://myaccess.ucsf.edu/
3. To reset your GALEN password visit https://www.ckm.ucsf.edu/account/
4. To reset your HBS password, log into HBS and click EMPLOYEE TASKS> CHANGE PASSWORD.
   

Medical Education Day 2009 - Mark Your Calendars

MEDICAL EDUCATION DAY 2009
April 27, 2009 ~10:00 am-5:30 pm
Parnassus Campus

Medical Education Day is an annual event that showcases the scholarly work of UCSF students, residents and faculty. Co-sponsored by the Academy of Medical Educators and the Office of Medical Education and enhanced by visiting scholars, the day is filled with opportunities to see the variety and quality of the work our colleagues are engaged in throughout the year.

For full Medical Education Day schedule visit:
http://medschool.ucsf.edu/academy/events/education_day_current_year.aspx

Portfolio Workshops Conducted

As part of building our portfolio culture at UCSF two portfolio workshops were conducted to ensure that all those interested in portfolios had a shared understanding and vocabulary about portfolios. A portfolio is a purposeful and longitudinal collection of tangible evidence of learner-selected work that exhibits the learner’s efforts, progress or achievement. This portfolio features the criteria for selection and judging merit, and includes evidence of learner reflection. 28 faculty and staff attended and were assisted by Pat O’Sullivan, Chandler Mayfield, Gitanjali Kapur, Jesse Friedman and Kristen Fitzhenry. These individuals represented teams interested in 13 portfolio implementations at UCSF in the UME and GME programs. During the workshop each team worked on a template to elaborate the many parts of a portfolio that a program must specify prior to implementation. Their templates are in a wiki space allowing individuals to continue to work on the same document. These documents are to be submitted to the Portfolio Oversight Committee, co-chaired by Patty Robertson and Michael Harper, so that the committee can begin to allocate resources to aid these programs in their portfolio implementations. We anticipate a number of projects to be well underway for the next academic year.