ACOE_Self-Study

of the patient with age-related macular degeneration, for example, would be covered at the time the clinical management of this condition was taught.

Data from both exit surveys and NBEO examinations suggested that with this approach, student learning was falling short of expectations. For the Class of 2011, the last class to complete the old curriculum, 27% of the respondents believed that not enough lecture/lab time was devoted to the subject 3 . This value increased with the implementation of the new curriculum with values ranging from 67% to 83% from 2012 – 2017 (exit survey data). NBEO data were consistent with student perceptions. Performance on questions related to low vision was weak with respect to national data and SUNY student performance in other areas of the examination. These data were presented and analyzed at meetings of the IRPC, President’s and Dean’s Council and Curriculum Committee. In 2014-15, the Curriculum Committee developed and passed a detailed proposal to address the shortcomings of low vision education. This proposal consolidates low vision didactic instruction into a single instructional unit that consists of lectures and laboratories. The proposal was approved by the Office of Academic Affairs and instituted in the 2015-16 academic year as a course entitled Low Vision. It is now taught in the spring semester of the third year and consists of 12 hours of lecture and 5 hours of lab. Notably, only 15% of the Class of 2018 – the first class to take the new low vision course -- did not believe enough time was devoted to the subject, a substantial improvement over the 83% who expressed the same view in the 2017 exit survey. Although the number of items related to low vision on Part I of NBEO is quite small (only 8 in spring, 2018), students who sat for the exam in spring 2018 performed above the national average for the first time in five years. Exit surveys and NBEO performance will continue to be monitored to assess the effectiveness of this intervention. Clinical Medicine Prior to the recent major curricular revision, clinical medicine was taught in a two-semester course devoted exclusively to this topic. In the revised curriculum, material covered in this course was distributed throughout courses in the biological ocular disease sequences with the goal of better integrating it with related material. As was the case with low vision, student perceptions of instruction in this area, as revealed by exit surveys, fell short of expectations. For the class graduating in 2011, the final year of the old curriculum, 27% of respondents indicated that not enough lecture/lab time was devoted to the topic of general medicine. In the years subsequent to implementation of the new curriculum, higher percentages of students indicated that not enough lecture/lab time was devoted to this topic; from 2012 to 2017 the percentage ranged from 47% to 60% (exit survey data).

3 Exit surveys were initiated with the Class of 2011.

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