Abstract:

Since 2016/17, our teaching innovation group has committed to increasing and enhancing the teaching of medical parasitology, following the alarming decrease in the teaching of this subject and of infectious diseases in human health degrees, following the 2014-16 Ebola Outbreak in West Africa and the recent coronavirus 2019-23 pandemic. To do this, we performed a series of curriculum modifications in the BSc Biomedical Science (BMS) programme at De Montfort University (DMU, UK), specifically in the modules of Basic Microbiology for Biomedical Science (level 4) and Medical Microbiology (level 6), following the subject-specific threshold standards described by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) published in 2015 and recently updated in 2023. Our initial intervention resulted in a significant increment in students’ satisfaction enrolled in the Basic Microbiology module from 20% in 2015/16 to 64% in 2016/17, which has been maintained since. In addition to the curriculum interventions performed, which involved the introduction of innovative research-led workshops to tackle emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, notably human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and haemorrhagic fever viruses, we have gradually been implementing the use of the virtual e-Parasitology’s resources to enhance the clinical practical aspect of these modules and facilitate the acquisition of diagnostic skills in our students by overcoming time and laboratory space constraints.

Post-COVID, DMU has embraced the block (intensive) teaching format to deliver the specific clinical science programmes (BMS and BMedSci Medical Science) and the related MSc Advanced Biomedical Science in an intensive teaching delivery mode from September 2023 (https://www.dmu.ac.uk/empowering-university/edu2030/index.aspx). Thus, the teaching will be moved from a traditional year-long mode into a two semesters system with two blocks of seven weeks each (https://www.dmu.ac.uk/empowering-university/edu2030/block-learning-part-time.aspx), with the aim of enabling students to engage more in their learning and help them to strengthen their learning community and sense of belonging. Block teaching is a controversial topic in the academic community, with different works in the published literature reporting on different benefits and negative impacts on students’ learning and performance, which are mostly linked to how students embrace this new intensive mode of teaching delivery. Thus, the introduction of block teaching at DMU could have a series of advantages and disadvantages in the teaching of medical parasitology status that our team will explore. Moreover, our manuscript will provide a comprehensive evaluation of the curriculum changes performed in these two BMS modules and will argue on how they may affect the learning of medical parasitology and infectious diseases. Finally, we will describe the methods that will be used to evaluate these impacts and students’ impressions on block teaching in Basic Microbiology (first year of implementation).

Keywords:

Block teaching, teaching parasitology, infectious diseases, undergraduate students, biomedical science.