Pathways Course Info

Scientific research is at the core of evidence-based medicine, and is transforming medical care at an increasingly rapid pace. Physicians have to evaluate new research advances, incorporate them judiciously into clinical practice, and provide leadership for new research into the most urgent patient needs.

The goal of the Advanced Integrated Science Courses (AISCs) is to provide students with a generalizable skill set to engage with research at the boundary of the known and unknown, and its relationship with clinical medicine.

1. Generalizable Skills

• Find and critically evaluate research information
• Communicate science to peers or patients
• Recognize how research influences patient care
• Formulate questions and ideas for research and innovation

AISCs don’t aim to cover the content of a field, instead the goal is to use examples from the AISC subject area to develop these generalizable skills.

2. Research and Innovation at the Frontier

Each course represents a major field of current frontier research linked to major unsolved problems in patient care. Whereas the pre-PCE phase focuses on science that is known, AISCs engage at the boundary of the known and the unknown, where there are controversies, gaps, and unmet needs, which students explore with course faculty and other HMS experts in the field.

3. Active Learning in the Classroom, Combined with Experiential Activities

AISCs use flipped-classroom and other active learning methods as in the pre-PCE phase, with an increasing emphasis on self-directed learning. Additionally, each AISC includes experiential learning activities, in clinical or other settings, which serve to illustrate underlying science principles and promote the development of scientific questions. Students actively participate in scientific inquiry, culminating in a final product at the end of the course, working with faculty mentorship to identify and explore unsolved questions that interest them.

Video: AISCs Overview

Requirements

Students are required to take two AISCs of their choice (see course selection process), at least one during Year III. Each AISC is offered once per year in either January, February, March or April.

AISCs are full-time courses, four weeks in length. Classroom time and unscheduled time are built-in for each course. Unscheduled time is critical for preparation, self-directed exploration and development of original questions and work products.

Requirement Note: AISC courses are not required for MD-PhD students, who may choose to take them as electives if they wish.

Course Selection Process

AISC placements are made via the OASIS lottery process. During the lottery, students rank their top AISC course preferences. The lottery maximizes preferences and assignments are made. Each course has an enrollment cap.

In past years, about 85 - 90% of students have received their first choice, and almost all students have received at least their second choice based on submitted selections. Add/drop changes for AISCs may be completed by self-service up to 45 days in advance of the start date of each course.

Video: How do I Choose an AISC?

Courses:

The following courses are planned for 2021.

Note: Months are based on the 2020 schedule and may change in future years.

January

• Cancer Biology
• Human Genetics
• Medications and Evidence

February

• Immunology
• Regenerative Biomedicine
• Translational Biomedical Engineering

March

• Computationally Enabled Medicine
• Global and Community Health
• Health Systems Science
• Neurobiology

April

• Metabolism, Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine
• Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
• Sex and Gender (new course under development)

Full-Time Commitment

During each course, students should plan to devote their full-time effort for classroom and experiential activities, as well as unscheduled time for course preparation.

Teaching Setting

The bulk of structured course time is spent in the classroom rather than in a clinical setting. The goals and objectives of AISCs differ significantly from those of clinical electives. The goal of the AISCs is to promote an understanding of scientific concepts and to encourage scientific inquiry, whereas the goal of a clinical elective is to promote a deeper understanding of clinical medicine.

For example, the goal of a cancer clinical elective is to learn about the diagnosis and treatment of various malignancies. In contrast, the goal of the cancer biology AISC is to develop a skill set to engage with frontier research, to explore how the scientific understanding of the cellular and molecular basis of cancer relates to clinical cancer care, to explore questions at the boundary between the known and unknown, and to consider how such questions might be answered. As such, the AISCs devote a significant amount of time to self-directed learning and deep exploration of a question of interest rather than teaching in depth about the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Experiential Activities

Typical of most AISCs, there are two half-day experiential activities per week, and three half-days in the classroom, though there are differences between the AISCs. The experiential activities vary by course. Typically, they are clinical experiences, and span a number of different specialties or sub-specialties within a single AISC. The goal of the clinical experiences is to identify unmet patient needs rather than focus on learning the clinical medicine of the field. Non-clinical experiences such as laboratory experiences or visits to industry are also utilized in some AISCs. Importantly, clinical experiences are integrated into the course through facilitated discussions at the clinical sites and at HMS focusing on the bidirectional interaction between basic science and clinical medicine.

Video: What is the Purpose of the Clinical and Other Experiential Components?

Basic Research Experience

The AISCs are designed to accommodate students at different levels of knowledge and experience in basic science research. Mechanisms for mentorship and feedback, as well as primers on the basic knowledge required for each course are built into the AISCs to enable students to explore a scientific topic and engage in the scientific process in an unfamiliar subject area. Performance evaluations take prior experience into account.

Video: What is the Value of AISCs to Students who may not go into Research?

Final Work Product

The AISCs aim to encourage self-directed study and independent thought. Each course has several work assignments including a creative final work product. Students choose their own topic, within the broad scope of the course, based on their clinical experiences and developing professional interests. The format of the work product is set by each course, and some courses offer more than one option.

Examples of final work products include a research proposal, an explanation for a patient about research relevant to their condition and clinical choices, a short review of progress and challenges in a research field, educational materials for students, or a newspaper article for the general public. Whatever the specific format, the work product provides an opportunity to develop and display the generalizable skills that the AISCs are designed to enhance.

Assessment

AISCs are graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis. A narrative assessment is provided to each student.  Each course has both a final product and one or more smaller intermediate products (written or oral presentations) that serve as the basis for assessment. The number and type of assignments vary by course. The formal learning objectives are the generalizable skills, placed in the context of the questions and approaches of the field of each AISC.

Attendance

The AISCs Absence Policy outlines procedures for a planned absence, residency interviews, illness or family emergency and religious observances.