How are you teaching? The question, and aptly titled teaching initiative, posed by The Michael V. Drake Institute of Teaching and Learning asks us to reflect on what discoveries about remote learning have surfaced and consider artifacts to curate and share with colleagues. What instructional strategies worked? What do you need to be successful in the virtual environment? Furthermore, what are the ways in which we are staying connected with peers and student learners? Quickly establishing communities of practice during the COVID-19 Pandemic is important. This #MedEdPearls highlights a teaching initiative leveraging an iterative rapid prototyping strategy for professional development.

The Harvard Macy Institute “Health Care Education 2.0 – Transforming Your Teaching for the Digital Age” course which I attended in October of 2019, is the most unusual continuing medical education courses I have ever taken. It was simultaneously one of the great learning experiences of my life while at the same time being just plain intense. Being of the baby boom generation, I have found myself neither knowledgeable of nor comfortable with tools now readily available for education in the digital age. I specifically chose this course to close this knowledge gap and increase my comfort level.

The science of learning is an expanding field that provides direction for educators and students alike. As research in this area begins to have a greater role in health professions education, it is easy to be overwhelmed with where and how to best utilize the findings to enhance student learning. Planning for the new year, it can help us to pause and ask:

How can we as educators help students shine as learners by incorporating evidence-based strategies in our curriculum and instruction?

As I skimmed through the Harvard Macy Program for Post-Graduate Trainees: Future Academic Clinician-Educators course materials, I became even more excited for the three-day deep dive into medical education – a rare opportunity to take a break from patient care and focus completely on developing as a clinician-educator. As I read the session titles, I eagerly downloaded the pre-reading for “Effective Feedback and a Feedback Alliance” and “Drawing Parallels: Education and Leadership.” Reflecting on my most recent rotation as Ward Senior and preparing for a year as Chief Resident, I was ready to learn new skills and refine my practices in these areas. However, not every session inspired such enthusiasm. In fact, as I looked at the afternoon of the second day, a pit formed in my stomach. “Micro-teaching? Oh no. What have I signed up for,” I feared.

This #MedEdPearls highlights the importance of and need to understand the Professional Identify Formation (PIF) of physicians considered to be under-represented in medicine (URM) as supported by in the article Whispers and Shadows: A critical review of the professional identity literature with respect to minority physicians by Tasha Wyatt and colleagues. Dr. Wyatt first presented on this topic at the 2019 Generalists in Medical Education conference via an Ignite session which exposed the gap in the current PIF literature and the need to illuminate race and ethnicity as it relates to PIF.