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MUSE: A look back at Dr. Fares Gouzi's winning project, "Digital Laboratory for Preclinical Sciences"

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In 2018, Dr. Fares Gouzi participated in the MUSE call for projects, which aims to support the pedagogical transformation of training programs. He was selected as a winner with his project entitled "Digital Laboratory for Preclinical Sciences."

 

MUSE "Take-Off"—what is it?

The MUSE project " Montpellier University of Excellence " brings together 16 institutions with a common goal: to establish a research-intensive thematic university in Montpellier that is internationally recognized for its impact in the fields of agriculture, the environment, and health, and which will become a strong academic partner for all members of the consortium.

Through these "Take Off" calls for projects, it supports the educational transformation strategy of the institutions and components of the MUSE consortium. In three years, I-SITE MUSE has mobilized €6 million to support educational innovations through this program. The "Preclinical Digital Science Laboratory" project is one of the projects selected for Take-Off #1. Find out more in this article!

Dr. Gouzi's project is in line with MUSE's intentions.

Dr. Gouzi participated in and was a winner of MUSE's Take Off 1, which aims to support educational transformation. To better understand Dr. Gouzi's project, we must first understand what preclinical sciences are. These preclinical disciplines form the foundation of thefirst cycle of health studies. There are seven of them: Anatomy, Histology, Embryology, Biophysics, Physiology, Cell Biology, Biochemistry... and they are studied during thesecond andthird years of health studies.

Before Dr. Gouzi's project was implemented, preclinical disciplines were mainly studied through lectures. These lectures accounted for 77% of their courses in these disciplines.

Learn more in this video

 

Teachers at the heart of the project

In order to carry out his project, Dr. Gouzi, who also teaches physiology, rallied his fellow doctors and teachers. Together, they created the Reflection Group for the Teaching of Preclinical Health Sciences (GRESP), bringing together a dozen volunteer teachers. This GREPS met twice a month for several hours over the course of a year to discuss the project.

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A reorganization project

As mentioned above, lectures played a significant role in health studies education. The GRESP project aims to reorganize teaching and incorporate more practical work and tutorials. To implement the project, teachers chose the teaching unit entitled "Respiratory Systems," which is studied in the second year of health studies. The ultimate goal is to achieve a teaching approach that combines active learning and multidisciplinarity.

 

But then, what is it? :

 

  • Active learning

    Active learning aims to engage students in their learning process. Instead of simply listening and digesting information, students reflect, manipulate, annotate, and interact with each other and with the teacher. This practice requires the formation of smaller groups of students. That is why, with the GRESP project, lectures have been reduced from 77% to 34% to make room for more practical work and tutorials.

  • Multidisciplinarity

    Multidisciplinarity consists of bringing together work from several disciplines on the same subject. In the case of the GREPS project, this took the form of a complete reorganization of the various courses in the "Respiratory Systems" teaching unit. Students no longer study the seven preclinical disciplines separately, but rather simultaneously. The courses have been divided up by organ, and each discipline is covered simultaneously through a specific organ.

A long process of implementation

 

To technically implement this project, GREPSmembers made numerous changes:

• Asmentionedabove, they firstchanged the ratios of the different types of courses, significantly reducing the number of lecture hours and replacing them with practical work and tutorials. However, the total number of hours remained unchanged so as not to increase the students' workload and to comply with the reform in force.

• Then they modified the course content to incorporate more active teaching methods and multidisciplinarity. To achieve this, several new measures were implemented:

  • The creation of teaching scenarios for the various subjects covered by the "respiratory devices" EU.

  • Thanks to the creativity of the teachers, they were also able to set up digital tools that could illustrate the different scenarios (e.g., Visible Body: a digital tool representing a human body in 3D where each part of the body can be removed, analyzed, and dissected, allowing students to do practical anatomy work online for free).

  • Creating a space on Moodle: with a space that reflects the structure by objective and allows students to work from home on a regular basis.

  • The use of non-digital tools such as models, for example, to help students understand more easily than with a diagram.

  • The use of videos: e.g., live syncope, students must reflect on what happened to determine what caused the syncope. They then verify their hypotheses using the software provided.

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A useful educational transformation

  • The objectives of this project are to develop students' preclinical science skills by introducing them to reasoning and the experimental process. But also by getting them to think and understand things in a more dynamic way.

  • The goal for those involved in the project was also to restore meaning and coherence to preclinical science education. They wanted to create a logical learning path from which students would be able to gain more knowledge.

But then, does it work?

 

 

A project implemented since 2019

This project, which has been running since 2019 at theMontpellier-NîmesFaculty of Medicine, has enabled many other things to be achieved:

  • First, this project is a pilot for hybrid teaching. Although this is not the main objective at the outset, the courses taught in this teaching unit are bothdistance learningand face-to-face. In light of the current health crisis, it serves as an example of how to redesign courses in a hybrid format.
  • At the same time, this project is a pilot for the new reform. The newPASS/LASreform for access to health studies has led to changes in the second and third years. If the effectiveness of active teaching and multidisciplinarity can be proven, this model could be replicated in other teaching units, other faculties, and even other programs.
  • Finally, from a scientific point of view, the evaluations that have been or will be conducted will demonstrate the educational value of such a project.

 

Publication 1 on pedagogy by Dr. Gouzi

Publication 2 on pedagogy by Dr. Gouzi

Contact Dr. Gouzi

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Biology and Health Videos – Unlimited access until April 30

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A platform for streaming scientific videos focused on health and biology is available to students for unlimited viewing until April 30.

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