9th annual Learning Communities Institute (LCI) conference
By Zachary Cordner
Thanks to the generous support of a GSA Travel Award, I was able to attend the 9th annual Learning Communities Institute (LCI) conference last November in San Francisco, California. The one-day LCI conference was held in collaboration with the annual meeting of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which draws a large group of faculty, students, and administrators from medical schools across North America.
Over the past decade, a revolutionary change in the structure of medial education has come with the adoption of the learning communities model by more than 70 of the 140 medical schools in the United States. The Learning Communities Institute was founded in 2004 by faculty from four medical schools who realized the need to bring together individuals and ideas from institutions that were developing the learning communities model. Since then, the LCI has grown to include representatives from over 50 medical schools across the U.S. and Canada, and in 2011, the movement was integrated into the educational agenda of the AAMC.
As a collaboration among medical schools that support learning communities, the LCI seeks to improve medical education. The members of the LCI believe that learning communities can positively shape health care by fostering personal and professional growth, supporting caring attitudes and well being, and enhancing scholarship and lifelong learning.
I first became involved with the LCI in 2009 as a student representative from Johns Hopkins and have since been engaged in research related to the impact and implementation of learning communities and taken on a leadership role as a student co-chair of the LCI.
During the conference in November, LCI members and guests heard about educational innovations from Johns Hopkins, the University of Iowa, Vanderbilt, and Sanford before moving on to open discussions about the expansion of the learning communities model beyond medical school and the impact of work-hour restrictions on the educational experience. Later in the day, I presented a poster, along with collaborators from Vanderbilt, which focused on the presence of competition within medical school learning communities. In the afternoon, all of the LCI conference attendees visited the Stanford University Medical School where we toured their facilities and learned about their learning community before meeting with our keynote speaker, Abraham Verghese. Following the keynote address, a series of small-group discussion about future directions in learning communities research took place. The conference concluded with a group dinner and a visit to Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center before returning to San Francisco.
The LCI annual conference provided an opportunity for me to remain involved with the national trend towards the learning communities model, to share my own scholarly work, and to network with national leaders in medical education. I am grateful to the LCI for supporting student research and involvement in the organization and to the GSA for providing me with the opportunity to attend the 2012 LCI conference.
Over the past decade, a revolutionary change in the structure of medial education has come with the adoption of the learning communities model by more than 70 of the 140 medical schools in the United States. The Learning Communities Institute was founded in 2004 by faculty from four medical schools who realized the need to bring together individuals and ideas from institutions that were developing the learning communities model. Since then, the LCI has grown to include representatives from over 50 medical schools across the U.S. and Canada, and in 2011, the movement was integrated into the educational agenda of the AAMC.
As a collaboration among medical schools that support learning communities, the LCI seeks to improve medical education. The members of the LCI believe that learning communities can positively shape health care by fostering personal and professional growth, supporting caring attitudes and well being, and enhancing scholarship and lifelong learning.
I first became involved with the LCI in 2009 as a student representative from Johns Hopkins and have since been engaged in research related to the impact and implementation of learning communities and taken on a leadership role as a student co-chair of the LCI.
During the conference in November, LCI members and guests heard about educational innovations from Johns Hopkins, the University of Iowa, Vanderbilt, and Sanford before moving on to open discussions about the expansion of the learning communities model beyond medical school and the impact of work-hour restrictions on the educational experience. Later in the day, I presented a poster, along with collaborators from Vanderbilt, which focused on the presence of competition within medical school learning communities. In the afternoon, all of the LCI conference attendees visited the Stanford University Medical School where we toured their facilities and learned about their learning community before meeting with our keynote speaker, Abraham Verghese. Following the keynote address, a series of small-group discussion about future directions in learning communities research took place. The conference concluded with a group dinner and a visit to Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center before returning to San Francisco.
The LCI annual conference provided an opportunity for me to remain involved with the national trend towards the learning communities model, to share my own scholarly work, and to network with national leaders in medical education. I am grateful to the LCI for supporting student research and involvement in the organization and to the GSA for providing me with the opportunity to attend the 2012 LCI conference.