Curriculum alignment: gateway to capstone (348.3)

One goal of student‐centered education is to help students develop the facility to explore new areas of knowledge with greater confidence and independence. One “best practice” that can help students achieve this goal is to challenge them with case‐based reasoning (CBR) exercises that test their abilities to solve new problems by applying what they already know in a given discipline. To this end, a capstone immunology course is described in which small groups of students collectively work through online CBR exercises that are aimed at diagnosing the medical conditions of 25 virtual “patients” with various immune disorders. Beginning with case histories that barely hint at the underlying disorders, students attempt to identify the “best diagnosis” for each case based on evidence gathered from a menu of 100‐plus diagnostic test results (mostly presented in data format). A game‐like scoring rubric motivates careful deliberation because a student’s score is ultimately determined by the diagnosis selected from an extensive list of options and also by the overall relevance and extent of the diagnostic tests that were examined for that case. Course surveys indicate that students uniformly find that these exercises strengthen their understanding of the core concepts of immunology as well as many related concepts in biochemistry, genetics, cell biology, and microbiology.